Unfortunately its "peers" are not much better. The PROC is still authoritarian and wants to invade Taiwan and some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration so that the EU could become a "real" player.

>some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration

At least this I understand. Foreign powers, especially you-know-which-one have a strong interest in preventing EU from becoming too strong, and unfortunately this is easy to do because:

* it plays on primal human tribal instincts (they want to assimilate us, they will force or enable more immigration, etc)

* the way EU works, you only need to convince some of the countries