Yet another approach: A dictator surrounds himself with the people he used to know before he became the dictator, i.e. people, trust in whom was built in an environment where there was yet not much point in lying to him.

Yup. Median voter theorem already barely works in a vanilla setup (voters directly electing decisionmakers) because of issue bundling. Add couple of layers of indirection (voters electing local MPs, who elect the local govts, who then choose the Commission) and there's little, if anything, left.

I assume you are against. And you likely have majority of the European population on your side. Now it's interesting to contemplate why median voter theorem does not work in EU.

Fair enough. I am 50, so may anectodes are from several decades ago and are probably badly outdated.

Jut stumbled upon a writeup about the EU's Common Agricultural Policy which gives more details about the current state of affairs: https://elaine.mayoris.com/go/x5u4ooluse0aaauiok2lg063hjgfz7kqjvjwcsgwsoi2/2866

I get your argument. But the same one can be made about anything. French government subsidizing French cinema? Not fair, because it puts German cinema at a disadvantage. Better housing policies in Poland? Shouldn't be allowed, because lower rents mean lower salaries, which means cheaper industrial goods, which, again, puts Germany at a disadvantage. And so on. But in a federal state, the members should compete on at least something. If they don't, if they are forced to behave exactly the same in all regards, what's the point of having a federal state in the first place? A centralized one would do.

broader class of EU-like things might come to be

African Union is modeled on EU, but the centrifugal forces are stronger there so it's not clear whether it will ever amount to anything.

Also relevant to the discussion: Catalan independence, Flemish independence (Belgium), Scottish independence.

We should distinguish between appetite for decentralization and nationalism. E.g. Farage was for Brexit, but against Scottish independence.

By the way, your comment shows one thing that's may not be obvious from the outside (and maybe even from the inside): There's a lot of people who are in favour of the European project even if they never say so or act on it in any way. And not because it is cool and sexy, it most definitely isn't, but partly because of the historic experience (every family has stories like yours) and partly because they see EU as a check on their national government, preventing it from going fully bonkers. That being said, this political capital is completely untapped.

What does democracy even mean when your vote can't even in principle influence the laws of where you live? Why should any populace grant its authority to enact certain laws to a larger entity that doesn't share its values?

Ideally, every competence would be passed as far down as possible, but not further. That being said, there are violations in both directions. One way, agricultural policy (CAP) does not make sense on EU level and should be dealt on a more local level. The other way, army should be dealt with on the EU level -- one big army provides better deterrence than 27 small ones. Also, there are violations at national level. E.g. France would really benefit from being less centralized. But in each case, it's easy to see why there's no political will to change the status quo. It's coordination failures all the way down.