Not arguing about scumminess - but this isn’t an action of the EU, but of individual EU member states (i.e. Several governments and their representatives). The criticism here should be targeted at the invidiual parties that are spearheading this.

Some of my favourite EU fuckups are: Qatargate, especially if you listen to her speeches praising Qatar prior to the corruption investigation. And then that other time a project to create an ai tool that would screen refugees over the Internet to pickup on “microexpressions” of the individual to give them a trustworthiness score received millions of EU taxpayer money (but luckily wasn’t implemented). The EU carbon market is… Yeah. Or the shortsighted fund supposed to battle root causes of migration. And then there’s the permeating mess the Hungarian government is causing in the mostly uninamious-based processes.