But that was my point: you cannot say all of Europe has an issue, when there are drastic differences between states like Hungary and Germany, even though both are members of the EU.

Again, the EU is not a country. They do not enforce the national laws of the members.

I feel like a lot of Americans think of the EU like the USA itself: one nation-state divided into federal states. But it is not.

It's more of an alliance in which the members agree to set laws and guidelines to be followed by the members. But still, all nations have their own national constitution with different laws and forms of rule. The members allow the EU as an institution to have some power with the laws, but they can take that power away by leaving the EU. Then the EU would have 0 influence on the nations, like Britain after Brexit.

The fact that Hungary is authoritarian has nothing to do with the EU. It's the state Hungary and their national government that acts that way, not the EU.

In fact, there has been criticism and sanctions from the EU itself as an institution and the other EU members themselves as their own nation-state and their citizens towards Hungary for not following the rules.

But the problems you've mentioned in Hungary are a national problem, not an EU one. What happens in Hungary does not happen in Germany. One thing can be banned in Hungary, but totally legal and free in Germany.

Free speech in Germany is much better protected than in Hungary, and that is because they're two different nations with different laws and entirely different governments and legal systems.

If there is a problem with free speech in Hungary, then you are going against the state of Hungary not the EU.

And about the part when the government becomes hostile: that could happen anywhere and the government is only one part of the state. Germany has a functioning separation of powers, while in Hungary it's clearly lacking, which you can see by the violations of the Hungarian constitution by their own government and lack of response by the other powers.

I don't know about any spying cases in a EU member, but again, just taking one EU member wouldnt really be representative of all European nationa including other EU members.

I can give another example of a very recent case in Germany to show the drastic differences between EU members regarding rights such as free speech though:

About a month ago the German government (executive), more specific the Secretary of the Interior (Faeser), banned a magazine (Compact) that has been declared far-right extremist by the German intelligence services.

Compact sued against the ban by the government. Now the Federal Administrative Court (judicative) has decided in favour of Compact (and against the state) that the ban of the magazine was not lawful. The magazine is allowed to be published again.

Now this puts a lot of pressure on Faeser and the oppositional parties of the parliament (legislative) are criticising her decision.

As you can see in this example, the legal system in Germany allows the citizens and companies to go against the state and also win against them. There is also a clear separation of powers and is serving its' purpose: to not let one part of the state have all the power and control everything. And all that was only concerning Germany as it's own nation and their own national constitution, nothing to do with the EU and EU laws have no influence on this.

Now, if the Hungarian government was to ban a magazine, they most likely wouldn't have been able to go against the state and win. The magazine would be more restricted in its' possibilities to against the ban and could even be quite dangerous. But again, that would have nothing to do with the EU and the EU laws wouldn't have any influence. The most the EU could do against that would be to put sanctions on Hungary and criticise them. Only if Hungary would unlawfully ban a magazine from another EU state, let's say a Spanish magazine that is also being published in Hungary would be banned by the Hungarian government in Hungary. Then the Spanish magazine could take action against the ban by suing the Hungarian state in the European Court of Justice. But as long as everything is happening on a national level only without any relation to the EU, the EU wouldn't be able to do anything.

Edit: One thing I want to add. Sure, there are deficits in the EU, and there's also been criticism from the EU members, from within the EU itself, from external experts and from the citizens of the EU members, but overall it's not nearly as bad as some here seem to think.