Whats the point of the EU

I was playing under the impression that I want merge countries into the EU to reduce the number of cp I was using. However when I got Germany to unify with France I saw cp use stayed as it was.

So then I thought maybe their priorities have been unified and I checked and found that no, you still have to deal with the priorities separately for France and for Germany.

Therefore I can't see any purpose or advantage to having countries in the EU.