You still don't understand. The initial regulations were almost always directly derived from the individual regulations of the member countries and bilateral tr

You still don't understand. The initial regulations were almost always directly derived from the individual regulations of the member countries and bilateral treaties from them. If they banned e.g. a certain form of trade, then that's because some member countries vigorously opposed to these kind of trades and e.g. block with a veto. Of course, you can always lament that certain countries blocked certain trades - acting on their national interests instead of the interests of the trade union as a whole. What you cannot claim is that a system with bilateral treaties between 28 would in any way offer an advantage in terms of the complexity of the regulations. This claim is just nonsense. You can look almost anywhere you like and will find that the EU regulations have simplified trade tremendously over the years. Unfortunately, writing articles about how simpler trade among member states has become is less popular than writing another article about the ridiculous initial regulations which were derived from the existing trade regulations of the member countries.