Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.” 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality, 5 and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” 6 And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered greatly. 7 And the angel said to me, “Why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. Rev 17:1-7
Rev 17:8-13

Keeping the end in mind helps to understand what societies drift (accelerate) toward.

2020: Accelerating Towards the European Superstate, by Guillaume Durocher – The Unz Review

• Without Britain and Germany, the camp opposed to more EU spending was reduced to the “Frugal Four” that are Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, a coalition of smaller nations who lack the clout to block the ambitions of the Franco-German directorate. British withdrawal has deprived the EU of its second-biggest net financial contributor (some €10 billion annually) and of one of its biggest and most dynamic economics, but ultimately the Union has gained in cohesion.
• Since the Second World War, the pace of European integration has always been set by the Franco-German engine. This remains the case, even as France has become the decidedly weaker partner.
• The EU’s response to the coronavirus crisis, while uneven, has been decidedly more proactive and ambitious than during the financial-economic crisis that started in 2007.
• The new EU borrowing-stimulus plan is particularly significant for the following reasons:
  1. The precedent having been set, European heads of state and government will likely be increasingly tempted in the future to find agreeable compromises through yet more apparently painless EU borrowing.
  2. The EU borrowing will have to be repaid, creating pressure to establish new European taxes (referred officially in Eurocratese as “own resources,” a cold term intentionally designed to confuse European citizens, such is the price of consensus). The European Commission notably proposes a carbon tariff on imports, a tax on tech giants, and a financial transactions tax.
  3. Like the United States of America, albeit on a much smaller scale, Europe’s Union conditions states’ access to its funds, thus the EU now will have increased means to bribe national governments to accept its norms.
• Indeed, the European Parliament has demanded a “rule of law” mechanism to punish Hungary and Poland for their national-populist governments. The mood is suggested by Brussels’ recent decision to deprive several Polish cities of funds because of their creation of “anti-LGBT-ideology zones” (essentially declarations in favor of traditional marriage and pledges to not fund NGOs promoting homosexuality or transgenderism).
• Up to now, depriving a whole nation of EU funds could only occur with the unanimous support of all 26 other national governments.
• Now, a supermajority of national governments representing 65% of the population and 55% of states may move to deprive a country of EU funding.
• What’s more, the deprivation can only occur with a concurrent ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Admittedly, the ECJ, like other Western courts, has been known for plenty of legal creativity over the years. Nonetheless, given that the ECJ is made up of 27 equal independent judges, one from each member state including 11 central-eastern Europeans, this makes it less likely national-populist governments will be punished for ideological reasons as against legitimate accounting ones.
• All these developments give some indication of the character of the emerging European Superstate, which creeps along imperceptibly year after year, though ultimately forms something substantial: as of today, a sovereign and influential market regulator and an effective trade bloc (as the British have learned), able to bring into its orbit much of its near abroad (notably in central-eastern Europe).
• As times goes on, the north-west European core of the EU looks likely to increasingly have the means to impose its norms on the southern and eastern periphery. Patriots in central-eastern Europe had better hope Western Europe takes an identitarian turn or they may have to choose between their wallets and their values.