Re: "The old EEC"
The "old EEC" was a political union, not merely an economic union. The most casual skimming of the 1957 Rome treaty sets out almost all of what we now recognise as the EU.
If that were true, why would we have needed Maastricht and Lisbon to modify it to create the EU?
A more in-depth reading makes it clear that is is first and foremost an economic union, with political agreement required only where it is necessary to achieve economic stability.
Some things do look a bit sad now:
Article 6.2
The institutions of the Community shall take care not to prejudice the internal and external financial stability of the Member States.
Ah, I bet Greece would laugh at that, if it weren't so unfunny.
Even the free movement rules are clearly based on employment and economic grounds:
It shall entail the right...
to accept offers of employment actually made;
to move freely within the territory of Member States for this purpose;
to stay in a Member State for the purpose of employment in accordance with the provisions governing the employment of nationals of that State laid down by law,
to remain in the territory of a Member State after having been employed in that State
All of which seem entirely reasonable.
Even the definition of "The Assembly [European Parliament]" only requires it to meet once a year, on the second Tuesday in March. It was clearly not intended to be a day-to-day controlling Parliament, just an oversight body.
It was only Maastricht which extended the economic provisions into the areas of criminal law and foreign policy, and extended the economic provisions into the creation of a single currency, none of which was necessary to maintain a sound trading community. Even then, in those few countries which actually got a vote on it it was either rejected it (Denmark), or barely scraped through (France).