I'm also considering myself as a pro-European, I'm a bit on the other side of the fence, I still have hopes for the union, and I believe that it has done more good than bad so far. I remember very well a time when one had to queue up and show passports even for internal border crossings within the western Europe. (We could already travel without passports over the Nordic borders back then, but we'd frequently be stopped in customs anyway).

Anyway, I've upvoted your post, it's very well written. Corruption (or perhaps just stupidity) are always very much present in organisations with too much power.

One very minor but still very silly thing, there are regulations that all new cars should have "driving lights" by default when starting the engine no matter if it's day or night ... for safety reasons. I think it's a good regulation, but it's very much in contrast to the taillights; according to EU regulations the taillights should by default be automatically switched off during the daylight - to save power. How silly isn't that? I guess there are lots and lots of similar stupidities in the EU regulations if one just looks a bit closer. Some of it due to corruption and/or powerful lobbyists, other things just because the politicians are plain stupid, or having weird political priorities.