Ever closer union is literally in the first sentence of the treaty of Rome from 1957.
I don't get why people are still surprised when further integration happens.
The answer is very simple.
Ordinary people are not lawyers and not accountants, so they simply don't read treaties.
And the UK establishment line was that joining the EEC (common market) was merely a
larger trade deal; and as the UK had not previously consulted the public about previous
trade deals, there was likewise simply no need for a referendum on this one.
We were also told that the referendums in the other three applicants (Denmark, Eire and
Norway) were because they had written constitutions that required a referendum, and that
because the UK constitution was not likewise formally codified, no UK referendum was needed.
The absence of a referendum meant that many key issues such as what the EEC was really
about and what the business case for joining was, were not debated in front of the UK public.
When that text you quote was referred to by sceptics, it was dismissed (in 1972) by the
UK government as meaningless political trapping wish fulfilment aspiration put in to please a
few utopian European visionaries that would not actually lead anywhere and later (i.e. in 1975)
that if it looked like leading anywhere the UK public would be further consulted.
And people tended to trust the government more in those days.
And there was no Internet in the 1970s to point out such lies.
