National governments are jealous of their powers, and fearful that the lightweight EU parliament would just be a tool of lobbyists rather than responsive to citizens, that citizens wouldn't be engaged with their representatives. And in many ways they're right. But it's a Catch-22: the EU parliament will remain a bunch of lightweights for as long as it has little power.
The EU definitely has a bunch of problems. Top of the list is democratic back-sliding in Hungary, Poland, Romania. And Euro area fiscal union or some other mechanism of fixing economic imbalances under monetary union without needing pro-cyclical austerity and depreciation. And migration from Middle East and Africa. And USA's pivot towards unenlightened self-interest and Russia's reawakened regional power-plays. Brexit is a fair ways down the list at this point for the rest of the EU, much less democratic reform, alas.
The fiscal union was flawed from the onset, which is why Margaret Tatcher opposed the UK joining the Eurozone. And she was right to do so.
People in Poland, Hungary and Romania should fight for democracy, as opposed to waiting for the EU to fix their problems. Democracy is won in the street, it isn't granted by decree.
While I don't like their policies, this is what the people want and this is what democracy in eastern europe looks like.
The 20th century was filled with dictators that won election repeatedly. Winning election repeatedly isn't the hallmark of democracy; peaceful and regular transfer of power is much more indicative.
In any case, democracy is about far more than simply winning elections. Protection of minorities, apolitical rule of law, independent media. Hungary is regressing badly across the board.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-viktor-orban...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-vikt...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/world/europe/hungary-orba...
I agree with Fidesz's anti immigration stance, but I what I don't agree with is eroding democracy.
Romania is practically led by crooks who also got elected democratically. Now they're eroding democracy and the judicial and giving themselves a get out of jail free ticket.
That's probably what the Cameron administration tried to do and failed. After he promused to hild the referendum and won tge majoriry, he probably hoped the outcome would be something like 48% leave and use that as a bargaining coin to negotiate with the EU. It didn't work because the Brtis voted to leave instead.