Of those in the 27-nation bloc, the EU is a agglomeration overseen by a top-heavy bureaucracy devoted to creating arcane regulations about everything from cheese to fishing quotas. The noble goals shortly after the devastation of World War II, the EU appears to critics as impotent amid a debt crisis that has widened north-south divisions, threatened to the euro currency and plunged by several members, from Greece, to Ireland, Spain, and into economic turmoil.