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The EU should be mainly a customs and trade union. No human rights and other bullshits. No hate speech and disinformation fighting. And it should put Europeans first.
IMO it was doomed from the start. Since the mid-20th century practically all institutions are being taken over by big-government leftists, and creating one from scratch that's too big for anyone to take down and too far removed from the people for anyone to keep it in check just meant giving the institution-eating left a giant gift that keeps on giving. An alternate, politically neutral EU was never an option.
The development of the EEC/EU in this direction was surprisingly late. The devil's bargain seems to have been circa 1990: German demands for a Größerer Staat to rival the US were granted by the nationalistic French left, in return for the EU becoming a device for enforcing social democracy across France's competitors. The British Conservatives said "FOMO!", ditched the Eurosceptic Thatcher, and the other countries had little choice but to come along.
However, there are complexities, e.g. the EU has gradually adopted German hard-money/fiscal prudence views, and so that has also become associated with the EU even in the minds of Eurosceptics. The EU's expansion east has also brought in countries who are not aligned with the social projects of the Brussels elites, and this tension has not yet been resolved.
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