The key supposed benefit of the EU was its collective bargaining power. Yet, this notion must now be questioned by European capitals, as von der Leyen has completely capitulated to daddy. Further deindustrialisation, economic decline, political instability, and irrelevance await.
People who come from Brazil or Latin America will find the European capitulating bourgeois attitude familiar. A comprador bourgeois that submits to an external power against the interests of your nation. As Lucifer said in Paradise Lost, better to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven. They don’t give a shit about their nation, they just want to maintain their capital, which nowadays is just financial capital.
I think the shock for the euros is that they didn’t understand they were vassals to the empire, and now they have to face the reality.