I mentioned the kettles because I worked for Philips Electronics then, it was used to illustrate the culture of protectionism that often does not change overnight. I do not know what it was like after 1992 because I was not there then. Philips was longing forward to the abandonning of National borders and National standards as it had factories all over Western Europe some interconnected. Unfortunately the company has struggled since 1993. The market for electronics is more global and I would guess more half its UK base had been closed in the last 30 years including large factories at Durham and Washington in the North East.
I found the Dutch were reasonable as they are more natural traders and merchants. so better understand flexibility and compromise. The Germans were more rigid and because the German market is large and central they felt more others should bend to them rather the other way round.
Once standards are agreed and accepted life is easier, but getting everyone to agree to same standards can be very difficult when many nations have different points of view.
Not just nations. There are competing interests which cross borders and are actually more important than national self interest, such as business, workers and consumers interests, or environmental ones. In truth, national interests largely boil down to the blend of those broader competing interests within a nations culture anyway. Depending on your personal politics it is therefore easy to find things to complain about regarding the EU. Those on the right can find examples where they dislike some of the constraints on business, those on the left that it could offer more protection for workers etc. The EU does a pretty good job of balancing all these things
and the various national interests. And it is an evolving institution.
It does tend to be slow. What it does is consult widely, deliberate carefully, balance competing interests, engage experts and technocrats and generally come to pretty good technical and legislative solutions to the everyday issues in the end. That is because it realises that
process is important. If you get the decision making
process right then it only leaves the final value judgement for a mistake to creep in. If you don't get the process right, your potential for error is significantly greater. Getting the process right, means being thorough, which is slow. Speeding things up often means cutting corners on the process, so it can mean a wrong response implemented quickly. That might be worse than no response. Process is baked in to the EU. It has to be. All the competing nations and lobbyists insisted on having some representation and voice in it and they keep a beady eye that what was painstakingly agreed is stuck to.
Consequently the EU is not good at responding quickly to new crises. It's just not well set up for that. That wasn't it's purpose so that shouldn't be a surprise. Countries are jealous of their sovereignty so the EU is on the one hand hampered by curbs on its powers by this yet on the other expected to quickly respond in a way that requires powers it has not always been granted. If you want it to solve them it means giving it more powers. Until a crisis looms, no-one is prepared to do it, but at that point it is too late. Afterwards, it tends to learn lessons and devise something better to put in place for next time or even put measures in place to avoid the same thing happening again.
Post Brexit the UK ought to be able to respond quickly to new crises and quicker should equal better, but our long term everyday measures will probably be less well considered and legislated for, so ultimately will mean deficiencies compared to the EU. Neither of these
has to be true, but probably will.