A government funded, unionwide research agency does sound like a good idea to me. But DARPA is a military r&d agency and I’d rather see an agency focused on benefitting civilian life, preserving nature, sustainability and such.
EU would clearly benefit from concentrating each nations military industries into unionwide companies and projects, too, though, but idk, I feel like we as a society could benefit from a strong, well funded civilian research effort.
I don’t know if there is such already out there, all I ever hear about is either underfunded or financed by private profit-oriented companies.