I found this on Reddit and I read the whole thing, I thought it was interesting.
The author argues in favour of greater European independence on defence (and less dependence on the US). The article is a year old but I think it’s still relevant.
The author is apparently a journalist with France 24, a French state-owned media company, so you could say that makes him biased in favour of the French position. But I think he still makes valid points.
Which goes back to the point about France and Germany being able to control the momentum with a third of the population.
With a mathematically representative EU parliament then France and Germany shouldn’t be able to control anything by themselves because like you say, their combined population is less than half of the EU