[1] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/startup-europe-initia...
Initiatives like this can clear the way for equalizing regulations that now hinder start-ups to operate across the EU, and remove barriers in certain countries, with direct input from existing start-ups.
How can this be a bad thing?
And that in the same country were my grandparents had to hide in the basement for German bombs, and nearly starved to death in the winter.
Also, I'm married to a woman who grew up in a totalitarian communist state that is now also part of the same borderless EU.
If you don't consider that a success, you have zero perspective.
The EU (population 500 million) employees about 33 thousand people - there are more civil servants here in Scotland (population 6 million) - about 50,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Civil_Service
Mind you, we have have too many civil servants here in Scotland. However, compared to Greece (population 10 million) which has about 600,000 the EU (and even Scotland's) civil service payroll looks pretty harmless.
NB I think a more accurate number for total EU employees - is about 50 thousand - the 33 thousand figure above is for the executive branch:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190488830457647...
Still - hardly the "worlds largest bureaucracy"
[1] - http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article113330591/4365-EU-Beamt... (in german)
On the other hand, my gut feeling after attending web/entrepreneur/conferences is that half of the interesting people I met have actual initiatives or strong interest to help & promote entrepreneurship.
So I'm left wondering how this ecosystem of bottom-up initiatives could really connect with the top-down EU. Because it would be a nice thing to have a stronger federation of our local initiatives, especially to help those getting started and also because we can't just go away with legal & bureaucratic issues.