[mercurial]

My take on it: the EU works by having state surrender part of their national sovereignty, and instead go for a set of commonly-agreed rules.

However, transcontinental treaties like TTIP and its ISDS provision would effectively remove a big chunk of each nation's (and the EU's as a whole) capacity to make decision which could be seen as "business-unfriendly". Additionally, the fact that modern economies are so intertwined make them quite fragile (witness the way the financial crisis crossed oceans), which in turn mean less control by national governments.