GP is right that the EU is the result of a long process that started with the goal of preventing another big European war. You are also right in that a large part of what is happening is a result of power politics.
Hyperbole? The E.U. is a project spearheaded by the same 3-4 nations that had the biggest colonies on earth, enslaving over 2 billion people in horrendous conditions (including mass executions when they misbehaved). And that was going on, not in the middle ages, but until the sixties (and in a different form today).
Betweem them, the country that had the less colonies, started 2 world wars in order to expand. EU was created, among other things, to contain that country (and you can find that as an explicit goal from prominent French politicians advocating for its creation)...
Powerful empire-building nations are not about fun and love...
After all, you write: "EU was created, among other things, to contain that country", while my post was in reply to somebody who claimed that peace-keeping was totally irrelevant to why the EU (and its predecessors) were formed.
As with all similar noble initiatives, the EU has much less to do with fairness and much more with power concentration (as is becoming exceedingly obvious).