You know what's funny - US is constantly railing about inequality - meanwhile median income between poorest and richest EU members is close to 10x - in the US it's ~2-3 between states. It's no longer "the 1% are exploiting us" narrative and "democracy will save us" - these are similarly sized countries where people are 10x richer in one compared to the other.
And that's just one easily quantifiable difference of how diverse the EU actually is, broader point is - these are different countries with different culture, history, religion, economies, language, ethnicity, etc. pretending you can bunch them all up in to a single unit and that democracy makes any sense in this context is ridiculous.
That's comparing apples to oranges. Country != state.
Which is totally valid, since both are fruit, and we can e.g. compare their nutricional value to decide what to eat. Or their selling price, to decide what to buy. Etc.
>Country != state
That's kind of the parent's whole point. That countries are the closest thing the EU has to states, and that they must get much closer to states for EU to function properly.
This is my point
> ...the EU to get to something resembling the states,
as:
EU member nations need to have their sovereignty diminished. That's extremely hard to swallow if you're the one losing rights/protections to a foreign institution.
And that's a problem for the EU, because many people don't feel like it does a very good job of listening to people (or even countries). Instead, they feel that it does what it wants, and runs over people who don't like the EU's self-decided plan.
That would be a problem for the US, too (see the approval ratings of either Congress or the president), but we're not having to hand over much new power to either one at the moment, so inertia is working for the US. It's working against the EU.
I wonder if the free movement of people is an unworkable concept without also consistent laws.
That would be career suicide for a politician, but not for EU bureaucrats.
That's the sort of contempt they hold for the populace of the EU, they couldn't care at all.
I think Brexit highlighted this big hole. Who spoke for the EU? You'd occasionally see a headshot with a "EU President" title attached to it, which would then be dismissed in favour of the opinion of Merkel or Hollande who didn't even notionally represent the Brttish in any way.
If the EU is to govern so much, it needs a polity that Europeans jointly elect, with representatives that genuinely represent the EU, not local interests. The EU needs a face, parties with cross-border support, democracy, mandate... Even the UN has more of this than the EU. At least it has a face representing it.
I'm not sure this leads to better monetary policy (I don't really believe we confidently know what better monetary policy is), but I do think it's necessary if the EU is going to govern so much.