Sadly the EU is being led by a clique of unelected beaurocrats (commisars - like in the USSR) and the most democratic of institutions - the EU parliament as well as national parliaments have very little influence on what is being proposed and bulldozed in. For example, let's say in a given country literaly everyone is opposed to ACTA and the country has the balls to veto it (despite the beaurocrat's usual tricks of rolling in together things everyone wants and needs with absolute crap like ACTA). The same idea is brought back again 2 years later (ACTA v2). It is vetoed again, it is brought back again 2 years later and this time bypasses the veto by being "voluntary". "Countries that don't want it don't need to implement" - great on paper. Until you realise most people in the EU oppose it, including in the countries that implement it and by the fact of implementing it in the majority they make it a de-facto standard which increases the cost of doing business affected in the countries that now have differing regulations.

Same thing is being done with the "EU constitution". No one, other than it's rulers, wants the EU to be a country. The idea got shot down immediately in a popular vote. So they are essentially implementing it anyway bit by bit by stretching the law and outright breaking it (especially against countries that vote in parties that are not in the EPP club).

I'm a big fan of the idea of EU as it was before the treaty of Nice. It was a group of countries with similar values creating an open market and agreeing to make decisions affecting it together. Sadly the institutions that were created to oversee that structure have the priorities of their own (increasing their own power) and using both the method mentioned above and simply doing things "extra legally" (as lawyers say) they do whatever they want and if the extremely corrupt "court" tied to them decides it's OK there is no way to question it. These bastards say they are "strenghtening the EU". They are destroying it. Anti EU sentiment is increasing especially amongst younger voters in many countries and guess who will be very happy when it all goes tits up? One guy called Putin who has been financing a lot of the corruption we see (through countries like Qatar etc).