You have to keep in mind that the EU is not as integrated as the US on a political level. You need diplomatic leeway to get everyone to agree to do anything: instead of saying "this is what we'll do", it's "this is more or less what we do, everyone gets to fill in the details on their own". Without that level of flexibility and autonomy for individual countries, they would block the legal process
even more than they are now.
As for the link tax: I would blame the publishers pushing for it, not the EU.