Well, it’s more like the EU can not do anything while the national authorities can veto them, and the national authorities still have the competence for that, and the right-populists in the EU are proposing even less power for the EU authorities.
There was this moment during the crisis where I think we could have moved forward with EU bonds, a proper banking union, increased EU budged and debt relief for Greece. But now we are stuck with a deteriorating status quo.
I blame Merkel for lack of leadership but maybe she just knows the limits of what she can push through.
In the United States, one of the biggest powers of the Federal government is its power to regulate interstate commerce. No one in the EU is willing to give it so much authority.
To be fair, if the US is the model, you can imagine why they wouldn't want that. I don't think the people who wrote the commerce clause were imagining federal micromanagement of local schools or the War on Drugs.
The then prime minister and ex-finance minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker is now EU Commision president. So either he is incompetent and did not know about this, or he was involved. He claims he is only incompetent.
With the EU leadership being corrupt or incometent, it is no wonder the big companies are dancing circles around the national tax authorities.