[onemorepassword]

Although I agree with all of your points, let's keep one thing very clear: if it were left up to national governments (with the possible exception of Germany), civil rights protections in the EU would be considerably worse of.

National governments are directly pressured by the US, and MEP's are relatively independent from national politics compared to their national counterparts.

It's the corrupt national governments that tried to push ACTA trough the EU parliament (and failed) and it's those same governments that are now pressuring the EU to lift privacy protections.

The influence of lobbyists is not an EU problem, quite the contrary. It's the supposedly more democratic and transparent national governments that sell us out.