> It wasn't nationalism which caused conflicts in Europe, it was a lack of democracy.

This is infuriatingly vague.

What are you complaining about? That the various EU councils aren't directly elected? Well, they are all delegates of politicians who have been elected in their home country. And to have a direct election makes no sense, because it's not like a Swede will vote for an Italian politician. For that to happen the EU would have to turn into some kind of United States of Europe, but "surprisingly" people who complain about a lack of democracy also always want their own home country to remain autonomy. Which is a driving force in the exact opposite direction: less direct democracy, let the elected politicians duke things out while trying to work towards the best interest of their people.

I mean this is international legislation we are talking about, trying to navigate the different laws and customs of each individual EU member. It's inherently goddamn complicated and it's probably for the best that we let the delegated politicians deal with it for the most part.

Or is it about the supposed "unelected bureaucrats in Europe telling us what to do!" Because that's another part that I find really fucking annoying about Eurosceptics who talk out of their ass: the complaint that EU makes things more complicated and creates more red tape, when there hasn't been any other project remotely as effective at reducing as much bureaucracy from the European continent as the European Union.

You hear these complaints of "They're wasting time on creating more red tape and banning curved bananas!"? Because that too is nonsense, to the point that there is an entire blog dedicated to debunking such Euromyths[0]. Here, I'll give you an explicit example of one that I investigated myself:

On the 29th of May 2014 the Telegraph[1], the Daily Mail[2], the Independent[3] all published virtually identical articles accusing the EU of being out to ban classic perfumes. The next day the Times (sorry, no link) did the same.

None of the articles mentioned a source (of course), but they turned out to be rewritten versions of a Reuters article from a day earlier[4], pulling paragraphs out of context and omitting key information. The actual proposal consisted of a ban on three ingredients, and an increase of the number of ingredients that have to be clearly labelled, because they have been shown to be significantly allergenic.

A special report by Reuters from 2012[5] actually discussed much stronger restrictions that the perfume industry feared for, in anticipation of a report on allergenic ingredients by the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety. Moreover, that 2012 article discussed how the perfume industry has already been changing many of its formulas for decades, and went on to explain how a new labelling regulation – enforced by the same proposed legislation – would force them to disclose many (allergenic) ingredients of their secret formulas. Among other things, this would make it harder for brands to get away with changing their formulas unnoticed.

By contrast, the 2014 Reuters article indicates that the final changes were fairly non-controversial, likely because the EU held a number of public consultations with the perfume industry between 2012 and 2014. In other words: the European Union had been transparent to and cooperative with the cosmetics industry in implementing changes to its perfume regulation.

Now here's the real kicker: when researching this, we discovered that the main legislation surrounding cosmetic products – Regulation 1223/2009 – replaced the old directive of over 3500 pages, which was patched with 55 amendments and full of incoherent terminology, with a single coherent regulation of about 200 pages, greatly reducing costs for the cosmetic industry. Not that anyone took notice of that. And before you blame that old 3500 page document on the EU, realise that that was basically all the separate national laws thrown together onto one heap of amendments - hardly the EU's fault. Read the press release here[6].

A 3500 page document! Mind you, that wasn't the fault of of the EU, that represented the underlying, incompatible laws of the various member countries. And the EU fixed that and simplified it to a universal 200 pages, applicable everywhere. Do you have any idea how much administration costs that saves across the continent?

And this happens again and again, and you never hear anyone talk of this.

[0] http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/

[1] http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/beauty/newsfeatures/TMG108620...

[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2642389/Now-EU-rules...

[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/iconic-chane...

[4] http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-perfume-idUKKBN0E30GE201...

[5] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-perfume-idUSBRE8BF0...

[6] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-08-184_en.htm?locale...