Now if you remove the EU, which is an untouchable far-away institution, you have your national government, which is a closer less-untouchable institution.

Which can still blame things on those darned eurocrats and their disdain for the island of albion, as seen above and in other examples. Do we have different definitions of what a scapegoat is? I understand it as an entity that isn’t at fault for whatever bad thing but is made to look like one

If in, say, Portugal you want to invest more in healthcare (or apply any radical policy) the government can say “the european comission won’t approve this budget so we can’t do this!”, and that’s true, the budget would get rejected by the EC and you’d have to come up with a new one, and since “the EU is always right” in countries like these everyone will just bow their heads and go “ok guess the government can’t do this thing everyone wants them to do” this is how european politics actually work

The EU has pretty much zilch enforcement mechanisms for anything. Any they do have is political power, not bureaucratic power.