So much for the flowering of a European Union demos.

When the EU introduced its “Spitzenkandidat” or lead candidate system for selecting the European Commission president in 2014, many hoped it would be a first step toward a genuinely democratic method of selecting the bloc’s most powerful figure.

The idea was to get away from the opaque appointments of the past, where the Commission top job was selected by backroom deals among the 28 leaders of EU member countries, in favor of a system where lead candidates for the job were selected in advance by pan-European political parties. And to involve citizens even more deeply, the hope was the selection of those candidates would be opened out — via U.S.-style primaries in which any interested citizen could participate, not just party members.

It hasn’t turned out that way.

Despite efforts to improve democratic accountability in Brussels, all of the main European political parties have shied away from the idea of open primaries. Though some, like the Party of European Socialists, have not yet finalized their selection procedures, most parties are planning for party members to vote for a candidate.

With the European election a year away Wednesday, advocates argue giving citizens a democratic stake in Continent-wide candidates would create a coherence to the vote that is currently lacking. Even the Greens, who had an open primary last time around, have ditched the idea.

Instead, MEPs and some national party delegates will vote for their Spitzenkandidat at elections which will be held (mostly) outside of Brussels. To advocates of a more democratic EU, that is a dangerous retreat that plays into the hands of Euroskeptic parties that argue Brussels is run by remote, unaccountable bureaucrats.

“The Spizenkandidat as it is done now is an artifice, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig,” said Fabrice Pothier, the former head of policy planning at the office of NATO’s secretary-general and current chief strategy officer at Rasmussen Global.

“It is a pity for European parties to remain on the same vertical and controlled modus operandi,” he said.

With a new EU budget, the first EU election after Brexit, and the arrival of Emmanuel Macron, a new pro-European French President, this 2019 election is a test for Europe’s “democratic health,” and “the most important elections” since 1979, when EU citizens directly elected their MEPs for the first time in Europe’s history, Pothier said.

A primary election with the use of social media, he said, would “enlarge the voting base” and could also produce a “real pre-campaign,” citing the example of the French Socialist Party, which held successful open primaries in 2011, giving “a real dynamic to the presidential election.”

Paolo de Castro, an Italian Socialist MEP, said holding open primaries is “an aspiration, and a necessity.”

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“For the Socialists, it is a way to present a real competitor to the EPP [European People’s Party],” de Castro said. “Plus, after Brexit, we need more integration, and more democratic involvement.”

Many in Brussels are wary of rushing into more democracy though. “It’s a humble election,” a senior EU official said. “We are building things brick by brick. We prefer evolution to revolution. How can you expect a citizen from Italy’s deep south to vote for a Finnish Spitzenkandidat?”

“We already have trouble to bring people to vote in decisive elections,” said an official with the EU’s largest political grouping, the European People’s Party, “so what would be the goal of imposing a vote that is not mandatory?”

“Europe is more and more a representative democracy,” the official said, even without open primaries for the Commission president race.

Some are concerned that open primaries could result in having a Euroskeptic candidate or a candidate from the fringe.

Christine Revault d’Allonnes Bonnefoy — who heads the French delegation of the Socialist group in the Parliament — said the Party of European Socialists supports the idea of primaries but the risk is to have an election that looks like “pigeon shooting,” she said, “with citizens who come only to vote against a candidate rather than for.”

Even the European Greens Party, who embraced an open online primary in 2014 in which citizens over 16 could vote for their two candidates, has dropped the idea this time around.

“Those who know best the candidates are not citizens but party members,” said Philippe Lamberts, the co-leader of the European Greens Party and a Belgian MEP. The current system of party primaries, Lamberts said, “already carries the germ of a European demos.”

The Greens are reluctant to call the 2014 experiment a “failure” but turnout was well below their expectations, with only 22,676 people casting a ballot Continent-wide. Lack of interest is a broader problem for EU democracy, with turnout in European elections falling from 62 percent in 1979 to 42.6 percent in 2014.

The other main parties are sticking to a closed system for selecting their candidate for the Commission top job. The EPP will have representatives from its 50 or so affiliated parties voting to select a Spitzenkandidat at a congress in November in Helsinki. To be nominated, the EPP candidate will need the support of his or her own member party, as well as the endorsement of two member parties from two EU countries other than their own country of origin.

The Party of European Socialists will select its candidate at a congress in late 2018 though a “procedure of direct consultation among party members that can include internal primaries and the possibility to hold open primaries.” But a PES spokesperson said that a common candidate committee had been set up to discuss the system “which has not been finalized yet.” Last time around there was only one candidate in any case, Martin Schulz, who went on to become European Parliament president.

Leaders of national parties that are affiliated to the liberal ALDE Party will hold a “consultation on lead candidate status” meeting on December 14 in Brussels, followed by an electoral congress in February, during which the candidate or candidates will be elected. Didrik de Schaetzen, the ALDE party’s spokesperson, said however that similarly to 2014, individuals will be able to participate. “Any individual living in the EU can participate to the election by joining as an individual member to the party and select delegates to elect the lead candidate[s],” de Schaetzen said.

But for some, the in-house approach of the parties does not go nearly far enough to solving the democratic deficit in Brussels and indeed risks perpetuating the perception of a stitch-up.

“Do we want to continue with the same old recipes while pretending that we want a different outcome?” Pothier said.