That's a good summary, although without wanting to get too political again I would add one or two points.
The EU has been so named for only a few years. When the U.K. (and many other countries) joined, it was called the European Economic Community (EEC), more commonly referred to here as "The Common Market." We were all led to believe that what we were joining was basically a free trade & movement pact.
Since then the name has quietly been changed twice, first to the European Community (EC) and then to the European Union (EU), each change giving a clue as to the move toward full political integration and away from the purely "free trade" aspect. I won't get into the politics of whether this is a good or bad thing; I'm just pointing out that (as usual) the politicians and bureaucrats lied to us about their true intentions!
As for the inefficiency, I know of some specialized manufacturing industries where the EU rules on "free trade" have actually made it harder for them to export to EU countries than to non-EU countries. The ridiculously complicated VAT/TVA/IVA/MOMS rules are a good example.
Can anyone also explain why the European Parliament needs to have two seats, in Brussels and in Strasbourg, so that every week truck loads of papers have to be transported back and forth, most of which will never receive more than a cursory glance?
By the way, the U.S. also has more than one branch of Federal government: legislative, executive, and judicial. And then the legislative branch is in turn divided into the Senate and the House of Representatives.
