Selling the EU Dream

Open Europe have a publication out about the EU *communication* budget. Apparently:

The book shows how EU information policy is geared not towards providing neutral, balanced information, but towards trying to convince people to support EU integration.

Well, that's money well spent, isn't it?

Ethics aside, it comes as no surprise to me whatsoever that the EU is spending massive sums on making the case towards further integration. This is what the EU is about now. Whatever philanthropic and/or cosmopolitan reasons may have existed at the inception of the EU (or Common Market), these have long since dissolved away. Drown and dissipated by a mindless yet strangely autonomous bureaucracy. The point of the EU is not about trade, or doing the very best for the member states and their citizens. The EU has become a massive, bureaucratic monolith. It is like a glacier in an Ice Age; slowly yet surely rolling over Europe, completely covering all the governments in its path. 

The EU has stagnated politically and economically. It needs to keep progressing in some way, though, otherwise it may completely stagnate and thus start to wither away. And the only way in which it can still keep on progressing is through further integration. So of course there is a massive budget spent on making the case for further EU integration. It is all they have, and it is now the purpose of the EU.