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We need to consider a key factor as first and foremost: European union does not exist but on paper.
For you guys it's quiet different since you envisioned, sought, fought for and created a body made up of different states which later became the United States of A.
Now, for us in Europe that's a whole different story. EU has been imposed from above by politicians on citizens , as a result of political negotiations, allegedly to create a stable political and financial entity which would have been beneficial for all. Just to give you a an example of how it was imposed, in Italy we had to pay a "tax for europe". It explains with the will of our government at that time to be part of the first batch of countries inaugurating the new political body. In order to do so a country had to meet certain financial criteria based on growth and debt/GDP ratio. So the government put its hand in our pockets by means of a mandatory contribution. So mandatory that they just set the pro capite amount and took the money directly from people's bank accounts!!! Gents, I'm not kidding or making this up. They said it would be a temporary loan to be reimbursed within two or three years but nobody's seen the money back. So, the real purpose to the EU was to counterbalance US's hegemony over financial markets and political scene. But unfortunately the reality of the matter's slightly different.
Long story short: all EU countries have a different socio-political, economic and cultural background. The so long invoked "Union" part of the European Union is yet to come to reality. We in the EU, please note that I'm Italian and I live and work in Italy, have not chosen to make it happen. It was all politics. And for that measure, we're anything but united. We all have our own agendas and priorities and all the EU does is provide more politicians to feed, along with all the outrageous benefits they enjoy; taxes, because all member states have to allocate resources to fund the EU. Legal and regulatory nonsense, agendas, quotas, fines, investigations and so on and so forth.
Needless to say that in order to create EU the makers overlooked different economies, development rates and financial balances. I have to be honest, Italy's definitely not one of the leading economies. Not at all.
Sooo, my boring rant should give an example of the differences standing between the US and the EU. And also it should be an indicator of how we will never fully back each other up if we can avoid it.
Sorry for the long post.