Most of the criticism of those policies is false or misleading. You always need to be careful to research the actual policy instead of the media soundbite as the two usually diverge quite a bit.
There are perverse incentives at work. When the EU does something right the national politicians usually take credit (when they convert a EU directive to local law), and when a national politician is struggling with a local problem, often of their own creation, they will blame the EU. It was generally perceived as harmless to use the EU as the scapegoat, but since Brexit showed there are real harms some of the politicians have dialed it back. Not all though.
Which is not to say the EU does nothing wrong, but I find the standard of policymaking at the EU level usually exceeds that at the local level.
Balkenende warned the EU the Natura 2000 guidelines would bring all economic activity in The Netherlands to a halt. Because there is no way we will reach the goals that were stated there. The EU commissioner basically laughed and told him to deal with it.
Lots of politicians saw the writing on the wall. Nobody had the balls to tackle the real issue and change the guidelines at the EU level. It will be interesting to see how this will pan out.
There are perverse incentives at work. When the EU does something right the national politicians usually take credit (when they convert a EU directive to local law), and when a national politician is struggling with a local problem, often of their own creation, they will blame the EU. It was generally perceived as harmless to use the EU as the scapegoat, but since Brexit showed there are real harms some of the politicians have dialed it back. Not all though.
Which is not to say the EU does nothing wrong, but I find the standard of policymaking at the EU level usually exceeds that at the local level.