 The core ideology of ever closer union at any price is simply not achievable because national priorities must take precedence if democratic governments are to get re-elected.
Risks & Crises The founders thought that resolving crises would advance the Project, despite any public reluctance. However, ambition has often outrun achievement, the clearest example being monetary union.
Only an ideology needs to make its progress irreversible: expanding EU powers may not be reversed, by treaty. The EU’s response to populism and separatism is to call for unity (by which they mean uniformity). They talk over the heads of objectors because wise rulers don’t need to listen to common folk, although their failure to listen is at the heart of the risks they are taking, politically and economically. 
Economics & EMU-Euro Economics is a bit like driving a car at night without lights, peering at the road ahead, hoping that nothing unexpected emerges from a side road, all the time checking the mirrors to see whether anything behind looks familiar. There’s plenty of room too for back-seat drivers asking if we’re nearly there yet.
The five EU presidents, in their 2015 report, proposed four strands to completing economic and monetary union (EMU): they declared that the EU must have economic, financial, fiscal and political union. These four unions remain key objectives for the EU (it’s worth reading the original report to find out what they mean). 
A single currency was seen from the very beginning as a key signifier of a single nation—it would help mould us into a common mindset, to identify as ‘Europeans’; it would promote convergence towards a single economy, bringing equality and prosperity to all its constituent communities. None of this has happened in practice.
The EU faces economic risks that threaten its future. The eurozone isn’t ready to handle the crises it faces; only by deploying Germany’s surpluses could it be rescued but no German government would survive that.
The practicality of EMU and the economic security of citizens is secondary to the overriding ideological goal. In tackling its crises the ECB prioritised institutions (especially banks) over citizens, who had to bear the costs. 
Democracy The EU is based on an unshakable belief that Europe’s nation states cannot govern themselves because they are dependent on electorates, who can replace their governments. Citizens have no say in appointments to EU institutions (other than to vote for a largely pointless Parliament, and that only through political ‘parties’ set up for them). Institutional leaders are neither selected nor deselected by any representative process, but the EU has managed to convince many uncritical commentators and voters that it is democratic. We can vote for members of the European Parliament but to what purpose, since we cannot vote to remove an EU government we don’t like?
The EU has decided against democracy; they believe that it doesn’t matter what citizens want, if the goal is to deliver what they need. Failure to replicate representative democracy at the federal level makes nonsense of democracy at the national level, since federal decisions overrule elected national decision-makers. 
Lies & Deceptions The visionaries recognised that the unenlightened, general populations of the disunited nations might not welcome a homogenised super-state, so the goal would be achieved through scarcely-noticeable but irreversible steps. Since it cannot achieve its dominion through persuasion it has to resort to propaganda and to outright deceit.
EU propagandists state, invariably without supporting theory or evidence, that divergence is the problem; convergence the solution, although they don’t explain why we should believe this, they simply repeat it, endlessly. They claim, for example, that law and justice are upheld by an independent judiciary but in practice the judiciary is not independent of the European Commission and other EU institutions.
Another example affects the UK directly; when Edward Heath explained to the public the implications for the UK of joi