> illustrate that even corporate-focused news outlets admit that the EU is not built on a strong democratic foundation

Forgetting the own agenda US-based 'corporate-focused news outlets' have. Fair and balanced is not at home there. I can remember that the same publications have predicted the collapse of the Euro, the Eurozone and the EU for today evening, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, within the next ten years, ... Personally I give nothing to an article where an author (and not the 'Wall Street Journal') of a newspaper makes some wild claims. Othesr made similar claims (Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, the whole armada of UK's EU skeptics). That they say something does not make it wrong or right (well, sometimes it is plain wrong like the "the UK pays 350 Million pounds a week to the EU").

The UK for example has lots of people claiming that the EU is not democratic enough. The same country has obstructed giving more power to the EU democratic institutions. Their real point was not that problem, but that they (the UK) don't what to be part of a European political union. Democratic or not.

People make all kind of claims how economic policy is dictated and obstructed in the EU: either its the EU which dictates it, or the Germans are dictating it, or countries like Germany, France or Greece are IGNORING the EU, or the Germans say that there are blocks from whole groups of countries, you'll find for everything articles in some newspaper.

> you'd have heard about the example of the Eurogroup Working Group dictating the policies of the Eurogroup.

That's one of the Varoufakis myths. The Eurogroup is the coordinating group of the finance ministers of the Euro area. The Eurogroup Working Group is not 'dictating' the policy of the German finance minister or any other finance minister. Here, the German finance minister and the finance ministers of the Bundesländer also has large advisory staff in his ministry, possibly more than you'll find in Brussels. We have the Bundesbank, research institutes, the European Central Bank, parliaments, etc. Believing the Euro Group financial and economics policies is being 'dictated' by a group of advisors to the Eurozone Finance ministers is fully misleading and plain wrong.

> None of these people are democratically elected, yet they are setting the financial policy for all members of the Eurozone. Does that not concern you in the slightest?

They don't do what you say. So it does not concern me.

> The line should be drawn somewhere, as otherwise the EU will become a closer and closer economic (and political) union, with less room for individual countries to set their own policies.

The Euro countries will have a closer and closer economic and political union. That's absolutely fine with me. Countries may have different speeds with that integration, but generally I'm all for it. Then we have the regional level, which is also pretty strong. Currently one of the huge tasks is still improving the integration of current members, not so much deepening the union. For example getting the countries of Eastern Europe better integrated and improving their economies. But that's always a mix of EU policy and local policies.