On April 29, the Dutch city of Maastricht was the venue of a debate between the candidates for one of the most powerful political positions in the world – the president of the European Commission.

Most debates like this are held ahead of an election, in which the candidates and/or their parties will face a public poll to decide who wins. But this debate was not like most debates.

The Commission president is not elected – or, at least, not directly by the public. Instead, a convoluted process, which has changed over the years and even today is not clearly regulated, takes place.

Within the European Parliament exist groupings of political parties. For example, there is the European People's Party (EPP), which contains within it a variety of center-right political parties from the various member states.

The biggest other grouping is the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), which similarly contains a variety of progressive and center-left parties from across Europe. Plenty of others exist across the political spectrum and regarding specific issues such as environmentalism.

It is up to member state political parties to decide to which grouping they wish to belong. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, controversially moved his Conservative Party from the EPP to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – a more hard-line Eurosceptic grouping – ahead of the Brexit referendum.

Having said this, awareness of these European Parliament groupings is minimal – if it exists at all – among ordinary members of the European public. While most voters will clearly know the national party they are voting for, they are unlikely to know the European grouping in which it sits.

Here we come back to the Commission president. The current method for deciding who performs this very powerful role – currently held by Jean-Claude Juncker – is the “Spitzenkandidat” system. Spitzenkandidat is a German word meaning “lead candidate” and, as the name might imply, each European political grouping selects one of their members to run for the position of Commission President ahead of the European Parliament elections.

That is to say, the EPP has its own Spitzenkandidat (currently Manfred Weber); the S&Ds have their own (Frans Timmermans) and so on.

Once the results of the European Parliament elections are decided, the grouping with the most MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) is able to put forward their candidate for the role and, by convention, this should be approved by the Parliament and by the European Council.

The problem with this approach, however, is that when a member of the public votes in these elections, they have no idea who any of these groupings are, let alone who their leaders are or even the very existence of the Spitzenkandidat system. There is, therefore, a negligible democratic mandate for the new President, if any.

Worse still, the rest of the Commission appointees are then decided with no public vote whatsoever. Instead, each member state puts a candidate forward, and they are then assigned roles within the Commission.

The EU is clearly aware of the problems of its "democratic deficit." It is often one of the main points made by Eurosceptics who advocate far-reaching reform of the EU or, worse, wish to leave it.

The debate in Maastricht this week, therefore, was a clear attempt to try to lend an air of legitimacy to this process – but what a strange attempt it was. If anything, holding a public debate for a role that the public cannot vote on only highlights the problem here. Quite frankly, why bother?

Eurosceptic parties are currently forecast to do well in this month's European elections. And while Brexit is hardly a good advertisement for the prospects of leaving the EU, if there is one thing that is clear from the rise in this hostile sentiment it is that reform of the EU is badly needed.

One of the first targets for such reform must be the democratic deficit of the EU institutions. Holding a sham debate – in which the candidate for the biggest European grouping, Manfred Weber, did not even show up – is a less than desirable attempt at such reforms.

If the EU wants Europeans to care more about the Union and to have a greater stake in it, they could do worse than to have a little more democratic participation.

Currently the EU – and particularly the federalists within it – spend far too much time talking to and among themselves. Instead, they should start a broader conversation across Europe and start listening to what people actually want out of the EU.