The EU has lost its main purpose - in a sense it&#x27;s a victim of having largely done its job.<p>Although it was originally created to prevent future wars in Europe, the role it performed most effectively for most of its life was to be an incentive for countries on its borders to open their markets and become democracies. Spain, Portugal, Greece, and most of eastern Europe, left dictatorships and&#x2F;or communism behind and joined the European gravy train all, all through the 80s and 90s.<p>But its borders are rather different now -- corrupt cronyism (to the East) and Islamic radicalisation (ISIS etc, to the south) are the main threatening neighbours. It&#x27;s less effective at dealing with those, and there&#x27;s not many countries it can dangle the carrot of membership in front of, and the prospects of them being accepted are lower.<p>So with the potential gains gone, it&#x27;s left looking like a layer of bureaucracy and interference sitting heavy-handedly on top of two dozen market-based democratic economies.