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This is the European Union. It's made up of 27 countries, millions of pages of documents, a bunch of institutions and 400 million people. But what if instead we looked at the European Union in a different way? What if the EU was a food courts? But before we dove into this comparison, we have to view the world as a place made of restaurants. Each restaurant is a country, its regular customers are its citizens. They all have head chefs which are their heads of government. Every restaurant has its own menu, which makes it different from all the other restaurants. After World War two, most of the European restaurants were destroyed. They had a hard time producing food for their customers. To rebuild and avoid fighting in the future, those restaurants decided to do something different: to buy and manufacture kitchen equipment together. They called this the "European "Coal and Steel Community". It was a success, and the restaurants were able to rebuild their kitchens. Over time, they started working together more and more, buying food together, standardizing cutlery and putting in place food safety standards. Eventually, all the restaurants decided to move into a food court for the sake of convenience and to offer their customers a better deal. By moving in together, they could attract each other's customers, with the expectation that everyone would be better off overall. But to oversee the manufacturing of equipment, they had to make sure that all the restaurants followed the same rules. To do so, the chefs agreed to give up some of their powers, and they came up with a series of treaties. These set up rules for how the food court would function, as well as the three main institutions that make it up. These were the European Commission Council and the Parliament. The European Commission was set up to manage and represent the whole of the food courts independently from the restaurants. It's made up of workers from all the different kitchens, and it has the right to start making legislation. The council is made up of the different chefs who maintain a final say in most of the decisions of the food court. It has the right to request legislation and also plays a role in legislating it. Confusingly, it's different from the European Council, which involves the head chefs, who meet less regularly and discuss the political direction of the European Union. And finally, there was the European Parliament. It represents the customers of all the different restaurants to make sure they're involved in the process of running the food court. It also legislates the proposals of the European Commission. It has a final say on the budget, and can amend some of the decisions by the other two organs. These institutions were set up with two main principles. The first is called subsidiarity, which is the idea that things would be done at the level closest to the customer. The second is proportionality that the EU should only act to solve problems it was given to solve and not to overstretch its responsibilities. But ultimately, these two principles translate into one simple statement to the food court from the restaurants: "stay as far away as possible from our menus" Over time as more restaurants join the food courts, the EU took on more responsibilities. It started redistributing money between the different restaurants to help those that were less well-off. It put in place security at the door to decide who could get it, and it even created a common payment system for most of the restaurants. But at the same time, it started to encounter difficulties due to how different some of the restaurants are from one another. Some restaurants are more popular than others and started siphoning off customers. Others think their recipes are the best and want everyone else to follow their lead. Not all the restaurants are doing well and can afford the same expensive ingredients or kitchens as the others. Smaller restaurants, as well as those that join later feel that their voice isn't being respected within the food court. And there are restaurants and customers who disagree with the EU rulebook, saying that it affects their ability to change their menus too much. One restaurant even left to try it on its own, and others are questioning whether they still want to be part of the club. Over time, the commission has grown more powerful and taken on responsibilities that used to belong to the chefs. The decision making of the food court has been described as slow out of touch and distant from its consumers. But a lot of the problems about the food courts come from the way it was designed as a way to cooperate while still keeping control in the hands of the chefs. Every time there's a problem that isn't in the rulebook, all the chefs have to agree. It means that problem-solving takes time or in some cases, is impossible when the chefs' opinions are too far apart. For some, solving those problems means giving back power to the chefs and the individual restaurants. For others, the solution would be to combine all the restaurants into one big kitchen with all the recipes as part of a single menu. But while the food court has its problems, the restaurants have been working so closely together over the past 70 years that moving out of the food court entirely is a very costly move. Some have compared the food court to the supersized American or Chinese restaurants. And while from the outside they may look the same, a look under the surface of the food court shows it still has 27 kitchens, 27 chefs and 27 menus. Do you want to know more about the different elements that make up this metaphor of the EU? Check out the description. This was in Europe. Thanks for watching. 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