I agree that the Maastricht EU is neither a superstate nor a Confederation.  I think it is fair to say that Rome, or Lisbon, would be a superstate, roughly analogous to my federal government.  My complaint is not that Europe is building a superstate, rather, that the superstate will be too technocratic, and not democratic enough.

Does that make sense or am I still misunderstanding something?

We scrapped the US Articles of Confederation because we wanted a stronger union of the states.  Which is certainly a legitimate thing for Europe's people and countries to do, if you so choose.  Keep in mind I am not against a pan-European political entity of some sort, and really, the decision isn't up to me.  I just don't understand the appeal of the particular type of entity that is currently at issue.

My main problem with the current EU entities (existing and proposed) are that they are inelegant and (in spite of the fetish for a thing called 'transparency') too opaque.  Informed consent requires that the operation be explained to the patient in terms that he or she can understand, without specialist training in medicine.  The same principle should apply to decisions about dramatic and not-easily-reversible changes in systems of government.

(Well I have other complaints about technocracy vs. democracy but this is the main question I'm interested in at the moment)

Both the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, could be understood by anyone who was literate.  Of course, most Americans weren't literate at the time, but the principle still stood, that you didn't have to have any specialist training, in order to understand the government you were voting to create, or to evaluate whether its ongoing performance remained faithful to the Articles or the Constitution.

I just do not believe the same can be said about Rome/Lisbon, or even Maastricht/Nice/etc.  But at least Maastricht is more modest in scope that Rome/Lisbon.

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I am the most conservative Unitarian-Universalist you will ever meet.