The EU isn't comparable to the US in this regard, it's a glorified trading and monetary agreement, and it's not a sovereign state. The EU isn't making serious

The EU isn't comparable to the US in this regard, it's a glorified trading and monetary agreement, and it's not a sovereign state. The EU isn't making serious crimes like murder, arson etc. illegal, that's left to member states. It regulates market policy. Think something closer to NAFTA than the Federal government. But if you squint hard you can think of EU directives as some sort of equivalent of the Federal government obligating individual states to regulate a certain topic within a given framework, without spelling out exactly how that must be accomplished. That allows for local experimentation and flexibility. Whether you think that's a good or a bad thing I guess comes down to the philosophical argument of how close rule making should be to the governed.