Well, european countries usually didn't shy away from bureaucracy. Now that there is the EU, there is another big layer of bureaucracy, and it doesn't help at all. Even worse is the fact that these bureaucrats are really distant from the people, both physically and with their hearts.
We are still going on because we're wasting the capital we accumulated in hundreds of years, otherwise we would have succumbed long time ago.
Of course, this is a summary of my political analysis, I don't pretend to know the truth or really anything. Don't want to offend people with my opinion.