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I am not familiar with the full gamut of EU legislation, but in the area I am most familiar with professionally (bank capital adequacy), this is the opposite of the truth. In the EU, the bits of technical detail of bank capital regulation which are not expected to change a lot are included in the primary legislation (the Capital Requirements Regulation). You can see the key financial regulations on the European Banking Authority's Single Rulebook - "Regulations" and "Directives" are two types of EU primary legislation. The ratio of primary legislation to EBA rules implementing it is such that it makes sense to display the implementing rules as footnotes to the primary legislation.
EU regulations and directives are made by the European Parliament, which is elected, and by the Council of Ministers, which consists of the relevant minsters of the elected governments of the Member States (finance ministers in the case of banking regulation). It is a trope of anti-EU ranting that this is a smokescreen and that legislation is actually written by the Commission (effectively the EU executive). This is simply false. The Commission does have the exclusive power to produce the first draft of legislation, but the Parliament and Council have an unlimited right to amend it, and do so extensively. They are no more cut out of the process than the US Senate is cut out of the budget process by the Constitutional requirement that money bills originate in the House.
Regardless of the de jure situation, if the Commission had a de facto power to write banking regulations, the banks would spend more time lobbying it. I have spent many happy hours lobbying the European Banking Authority in person. I have worked on Powerpoint decks that were used by professional lobbyists to lobby the Parliament and Council. I am not aware of any serious attempt by my employer to lobby the Commission.
In most other jurisdictions, very much including the UK and the US, the basic structure is that the primary legislation effectively says "The regulators have the power to make bank capital adequacy regulations. They are required to take the following aims into account when doing so...", and then the entire bank capital rules are in agency regulations. When we lobby the UK authorities, we only talk to the PRA. The Treasury have to come and talk to us (which a particular gunner civil servant is keen to do) - since the Tory government cut free coffee in government offices, it is no longer worth our while to take the tube three stops to talk to them.
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