:::::Within the EU, EU institutions control the tariffs, the budgetary system, several taxes, several fields of civil law and other functions of the member states. Does it mean that Hungary and Slovakia lost their independence when they joined the EU? As to the Habsburg empire, during the middle ages, similar empires also existed: the empire of the Luxembourg dynasty (Bohemia, Hungary, Luxemburg), the empire of the Jagello dynasty (Poland, Bohemia, Lithuania, Hungary). All these empires had their own institutions (at least the king and his council), but nobody claims that they lost their own independence. Yes, the union of the realms and the provinces within the Habsburg Empire formed a political union, because they were governed by the same monarchs and there were some common institutions, but each realms and provinces reserved their own constitutional institutions: e.g., the Habsburg kings could not levy tax without the consent of the Diet, the viceroy (the Palatine) was elected by the Diet, the Diet passed the act that ensured the succession of the female line of the Habsburgs. In the course of the 17th century, the Habsburg kings made peaces with the Estates of the Kingdom of Hungary and even in 1711 they had to accept a compormise that ensured the constitutional (although in some territories, only limited) independence of the Kingdom of Hungary. Even the Habsburg kings of Hungary, could not grant offices and estates to their partisans living in their other realms in the Kingdom of Hungary, without the consent of the Estates. I accept that the Kingdom of Hungary did not enjoy the same level of independence from the 17th century, than it had enjoyed before, but Hungary and Slovakia lost the control over several field of law when they joined the EU, but, I presume, both of them are still independent countries with their own independent constitutional institutions.