In the US, the freedom is explicitly for the people, not Federal nor State government. States are relatively more free than the Federal government, but both are greatly restricted by the Constitution. Before the Constitution, the US had a previous government under the Articles of Confederation (see below) that had many deficiencies and only gave freedom to member States.

The EU is organized more similar to the US under the Articles of Confederation.

The first American government (Articles of Confederation) gave State governments almost unlimited power e.g. they could print their own money. It did not grant freedom to the people in any meaningful way. States were free to abuse this power both against their own citizens and, more importantly, the other member States. This created many practical problems.

The second and current American government (Constitution) learned lessons from this experience. It removed a limited set of key powers from the States and gave it to the Federal government such as the creation of currency. It also forced all States to interact with each other on the same terms, with strict oversight from the Federal government. Additionally, it explicitly granted rights to the people rather than their State governments, since the States had demonstrated they could not be trusted to do the right thing. These changes forced the States to play nicely with each other and treat their people better.

These changes were a large improvement. Almost every law an American experiences is State law, because States have much more freedom to create laws. The Federal government can only make laws from a short list. Both State and Federal governments are strictly prohibited from creating many kinds of laws.

In the US, freedom is for the people, not for the member States. The Federal government has even less freedom than the member States to make law.

> isnt the eu basically a less federalist version of the usa?

And what good does it do? The EU cannot speak in a single voice - there is no foreign minister, no defense minister, no whatever minister.

Like the EU foreign function: you have a person claiming to be the EU voice, and then you have the foreign ministers of every EU member that can just say whatever they want if what the EU voice says is contrary to their political game in their own country. Same for the other functions.

Being less federalist is not better, it is worse. The EU does not speak in a single voice in any domain.

Sort of, if you squint right.

The EU is in some ways closer to a confederation, but with various "hacks" - in the form of various treaties - to try to work around the problems that led the US to abandon it in favour of a federal model.

It's largely down to very different levels of willingness to integrate more, and various levels of opposition to the kind of constitutional changes that would be required for a federal model.

EU is no where near US. EU started as a economic union and became a political nightmare. It would have done far better had it stayed only as an economic Union. Further, EU doesn't have a constitution. In US every law maker swear to protect and uphold the constitution and I don't even know what is the equivalent in EU.

Id say the EU is less federal because each member country maintains its own sovereignty and local laws. Its more of a coalition of the willing. While in the US the federal gov can override states. The EU also has each state vote on different legislations. (Massive oversimplification)

Because the laws are different? Are you really confused?

The US lays claim to all kinds of bullshit. But more to the point; different values, different laws - does it matter how centralized the control is? I would argue neither is “more” free, just free in different ways. US has a huge problem in equal access to the law, which undermines freedom no matter how good the laws are.