That's also a misconception. The EU single market is an important project, but there is a constant failure to understand the actual reason why the EU exists or also a purposeful misinterpretation. Countries joining the EU are requested not to join because of the single market, but because they want to join the political project of a more peaceful and an improving Europe.
At its core the EU is a project to bring Europe together, to cooperate instead of being in wars (... WW1, WW2, Cold War, ...).
The EU is even more a political project as it is an economic project. But there are many other projects. One can not say the market is it. The main motive behind all that is the will to work together. Even the "single market" is it its core a political project.
We have seen it with Brexit. The UK never bought into the political project. Politicians also mislead the public about that. The EU is about social standards, political standards, environment, competition, building up the countries, joint research, joint infrastructure, a common law, being competitive in a larger world, ... and so on.
Just because something started as X doesn’t mean that evolution didn’t happen. The reasons for the bureaucracy are a lot and different but come down to power sharing between the stakeholders.
The EU is the European Union. 500 million humans.
This legislation is a win for the common person. Trying to portray as foisted upon the public from on high = a propaganda twist too far.
Of course, lots of things seem portentous in retrospect, if we look back on the path we took, of course it turns out we passed lots of signposts pointing in our current direction.
Germany has the idea of "Wandel durch Handel" (change through trade)[1], which is essentially that you can prevent and make war non-viable and eventually even change countries to follow democratic norms. The EU is the most extreme version of this.
"By pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries, this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace."
The European Federation was the goal.
It's worth noting that they didn't just do that in 2016. They were doing it for the entire history of Britain's membership of the EU. During the referendum campaign I talked to quite a few older people (my mother included) who remembered the original Brexit referendum in the 1970s, one that most people outside the UK aren't aware ever existed. It happened just a couple of years after entering the EU, which was done unilaterally by the Labour government of the time and never subjected to a referendum. Many people of that generation say they voted Remain the first time because they were explicitly promised that the EU (or EEC as it was then known) was merely a free trade zone with no ambitions to be more. In that era, without the internet, it was much harder to fact check these sorts of claims and although there were campaigners telling the truth, the public mostly believed the government.
Later it turned out that not only was it untrue but it had never been true, that Labour knew it wasn't true and that the plan right from day one had always been to abolish European governments by merging them together into one superstate. This is often claimed to be a federalist project, but there is no specific philosophy in the EU project as to what rights should remain delegated to the individual states like in the USA. In fact the opening of the EU "constitution" equivalent says that the goal is ever closer union - without limits.
This feeling of betrayal and deception was a big driver of why the older generation went so conclusively for Leave. Most common feedback I got on talking to these people: I haven't changed my opinion from the 70s, but now I know the truth.
That wasn't the goal of the EU. Even now it isn't the goal. Nations and governments still exist.
This is absolutely not true! I can't believe how many people repeat this. The people who tell you this are either misremembering, or they've fooled themselves into believing it, or they're lying to you.
The entire argument against joining the EEC at the time was based on the threat to UK democracy because it was well known the project was a political one, not merely a common market.
The leaflet the government sent out to every household in the UK stated this explicitly but chose to reason about why this wasn't a bad thing.
Here: https://civitas.org.uk/content/files/1975ReferendumGov.pdf
And there is a lot more material out there with various viewpoints on both sides expressed, almost all of them talking about the political side of the EEC.
It's just a nonsense that this wasn't known about.
> Whenever I point out on social media that the single market is the purpose of the EU, I get bombarded by replies saying: “No you’re wrong. The EU was founded to preserve peace in Europe. Gotcha!”
> What mechanism do you think they used to preserve that peace? Cozy feelings about elections for the EU parliament? Happy thoughts about student exchange programs?
> The single market is the EU peace project, which makes protecting it an existential issue to many involved in the EU.
This is what Britain got right, the political projet is not going anywhere, there is just too much difference in heritage (in different meanings of the term) and I believe it is unreasonable to ask the citizens of each country to let go of those heritages. The differences exist for a reason and are keys to keep an equilibrium in power.
As for the economic project, it makes sense in a way it's much more efficient, but since monetary creation gives so much power in ou current system it is problematic in many ways. The standardization efforts are useful but forcing everyone into a dominant economic ideology is not serving everyone equally. Funniest thing is that Germany who was the one dominating the conversation, found a way to fuck up politically. Fiscally conscious but socially inept that is the way of the Germans.
All that being said, I'm all for the EU regulations concerning the DMA but it's just because our interests align and that's pretty much it. France has an history of calling out Apple on their bullshit, so it's not like if there is no precedent.
> For months, we’ve been hearing leaks about Apple’s talks with the EU about the Digital Market Act. Those talks were not negotiations even though Apple seems to have thought they were.
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-e...
The EU cannot allow a large business to mess around like this.