The EU commission occupies a similar position to our civil service. None of our laws are actually written by MPs, they are all written by unelected (because if you want someone who is good at their job you don't elect them that just gets you someone who is good at getting elected) lawyers working for the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. All the MP's do is look at the proposed law, amend it and then vote on whether to approve it or not.Lords don't govern the UK, elected MPs do. Meps don't govern the EU, unelected commissoners do.
The key difference between the EU commission and the UK civil service is that in the UK the Government (made up of elected MPs) gets to tell the civil service what laws to write ("write me a law on dangerous dogs" or "write me a law to reduce disabled payments" etc).
In the EU, the commission is the only body who can propose the laws. So the commission proposes laws and writes them, and the Council (made up of governments) and Parliament (elected MEPs) both look at the proposed law, amend it and then both have to vote "yes" for the proposed law to become law.
The commission takes input from the Council, Parliament and even citizens petitions to decide what laws to propose. This is because it would be impractical for the council to propose every single law that needs to be proposed as they are national governments and supposed to be managing their own countries. instead the council sets the broad goals ("improve our environment", "increace our energy independence", high level stuff) and the commission gets on with working out which laws are needed to achive the goals ("law on sewage treatment", "law on wildlife protection", "subsidies for wind farms".
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