@Walter Hinteler,
That's a lot of presidents.
The fact is the the EU still remains somewhare between a loose assemblage of sovereign, independent states and a real union with a supreme central government. Moreover the passage of time and the growing body of administrative law and treaty policy tend, in my perception, to make the final resolution of this central issue of governance ever more difficult and unlikely.
It's also likely that this persistent ambiguity has so far been a net gain or benefit for the European project, because it permitted steady gains in the development of ever more pervasive common policies and practices, without requiring a final resolution of the rather intractable central issue of central governance. However that may not last much longer. there appear to be growing strains among some members regarding the rising cost of of the European bureaucracy and a parliament without real legislative legitimacy and dominant power. In addition the economic dominance of Germany; the North-South economic divide; and the politically motivated concentrations of many EU subsidies remaing sources of some fractious struggles.
That said the union has survived these and other serious strains over the past decade, a period which included a serious worldwide economic recession and continuing anxieties over Europe's growing dependence on increasingly unrelaible Russian supplies of gas and petroleum. Meanwhile the continuing demographic decline of Europe and the large, restless, and conflict-torn populations to the south pose a continuing external threat and ongoing immigratin problem. In any event all this remains an interesting issue in my perceptions.
The United States faces equally interesting and somewhat analogous issues in these areas, though in most cases less intense. Unfortunately for us, our current government is even more inept than those in Europe in dealing with them.
