I think the benefits far outweigh the downsides. To be frank, I think a big chunk of its problems is that it is not integrated enough.

Then again, my perspective is from someone not originally from Europe, that chose to migrate here and declined job offers from the US even though I would receive considerably more money had I accepted. I have zero regrets, by the way.

So take my opinion as one without the social nuance from someone born here.

I think many of the benefits could be achieved with better methods, other then putting a French style barley democratic bureaucracy on top of all existing democracies.

The reality is also that almost non of the people in the countries were actually asked if they wanted to join.

There is a difference between being pro European integration and pro existing EU structure.

how where people not asked if they wanted to join?

mind you, European integration is a major political pillar in national politics of basically all countries inside of europe and its periphery.

People vote on parties based on there political program, and most people seem to want to vast economic benefits being a member states brings. (heck, ukraine is basically fighting a war at the moment about an issue which basically boils down to European integration).

People definetly had a say if they wanted EU membership through the political process of there country.

The only case where this is a bit of a grey area is of the founding countries of the precursor of the EU. (european community of coal and steel). Most of those measures got passed as policy without a lot of democratic process by the populance.

But we cannot change the past, and considering the state of most of europe during the 1950's i wouldn't judge them so harshly for it.

I mean those problems are well understood. There are not that many parties to vote for and people vote for the party they dislike least. Some of those parties wanted to join the EU. In general it was elites that wanted to join the EU, not the party base. People might have voted social domestic because they wanted domestic labor laws but instead their country was integrated in essentially a super-national state.

The reality is most people vote primary for domestic polices, and the extent what the EU would do was not understood by voters at the time. There is a difference in initially joining and then having very little choice in the continue growth of that institutions power.

And in fact, in many places where aspects of the EU were put to a popular vote it actually fails.

There is also the reality that things like the EU/Euro were political projects and that Germany after the Cold War had to agree to some of these things in order for France and Britain to accept its unification.

People certainty were not asked if Eastern nations should be allowed to join the EU. Again, shouldn't a popular vote be in order when an institution like the EU considers adding a new member that can massively impact its economy and will receive untold billions in subsidies?

I'm Swiss so for me, a decision of such huge importance should actually be based on a popular vote. Not 'well in the 70s leftist parties were broadly more popular'. And once you are in, its incredibly hard to get out, and that is by design.

A real European Union based on fundamentally pro European pro Democracy principles would have been established over many steps and many votes. This would give some granularity to the choices. Maybe the population like one aspect of the many EU polices, but not the other.

In Switzerland we rejected the EG, but we joined Schengen, both based on popular vote. We join institutions such as ESA and many others. That seems to me to be a much better process of incrementally growing together.

> the state of most of europe during the 1950's i wouldn't judge them so harshly for it.

Lets not pretend the EU was formed in the 1950s.

> There are not that many parties to vote for and people vote for the party they dislike least

This is democracy at its finest.

How exactly is it just "barely" democratic?

As a British person, I'd suggest you reconsider. Things over here are not so rosy. Drugs shortages, crazy inflation, no discernible benefits at all except to a government that hates judicial oversight of any kind.

The fact is not everything was the EU's fault. There was a lot Westminster could have done to make things better. They choose not to and indeed actually gold plated many EU directives due to virtue signaling which made them much more difficult to follow.

That said not all the good stuff actually was caused by the EU either. I'd recommend watching Yes Minister but apparently that will get you put on a watchlist these days... https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1153smh/yes_min...

The fact is politicians at all levels including EU take credit for things they didn't do and try to ignore the fallout from things they did. All the while blaming the voters. Mainly because changing public perception of policy choices takes time and effort and they have limited of both and tend to want to focus on things they actually care about.

I think inflation in the EU is roughly at the same level as the UK right now.

Its actually higher than in the UK.

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate?con...

I see Sweden the "utopia" that some claim has even higher inflation than UK, I guess that must be because of Brexit too right? And Italy, the land of the great food?

The UK would do much better had they not chosen Brexit. Basically everyone here admits that (bank of England etc) apart from some zealot politicians. And the health system has collapsed. The problems are not solely caused by Brexit but it exacerbates nearly all of them.

Exactly. Brexit long term net effect could be a few points off their GDP. That's not the end of the world, but it's certainly significant and it will make British people a poorer, which of course has an impact on public services. Whether this is worth it's up to British people to assess.

My personal suspiction is that UK citizens were mislead about the consequences of leaving but, hey, democracy is about taking decisions with incomplete information. People have spoken and their decision is sacred. I wish the UK the best luck and it's with sadness that I believe they will need a lot of it.

Democracy is about informed voters. The voters were tricked by silly things like lying bus ads. Doesn’t look like a Democracy to me.

If your definition of Democracy requires no deception or falsehood in politics then there likely has never been a Democracy in human history. The voters never work with perfect knowledge, and the politicians always lie.

There's a bar to what we should call Democracy. It clearly isn't America with how liberal manufacturing consent works. We're in a neoliberal era.

Besides their xenophobia and racism, at least the Nordic countries are closer to informed voters.

Euro Area inflation is significantly lower than UK, same as Germany, France, Spain, ...

In the EU as a whole it's slightly higher because of the East countries (Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, ...) where inflation is crazy high because of their dependency on Russia for energy.

UK is in the very West of Europe, not East, and not reliant on Russia as East countries are. The economic impact of Brexit has just been significant, as it was supposed to be. Everybody knew it would be. Brexit was never about economy, but mainly sovereignty. That's a legitimate trade-off, of course, and many in the UK prefer to be a bit poorer in exchange for less dependency on their neighbours. I respect that. But it's important not to fool oneself thinking that leaving the highest economy in the world (EU economy was bigger than US' before UK left) was going to be good for the UK economy. That's just nonsense.

Can you share more about this 'drug shortage'? Is it like the empty shop shelves and empty fuel pumps that is claimed to still exist for years now despite being resolved within days/weeks at the time?

IDK about the UK, but in Czechia, we had a shortage of, among others, antibiotics, only very recently alleviated.

At the worst times, you could phone to thirty pharmacies with a relatively standard recipe (Augmentin etc.) and be turned away everywhere.

Been there, done that.

"Drugs shortages, crazy inflation"

Sounds precisely like Czechia right now.

The UK has been doing a bad job at a lot of things and they ended up blamed the EU. Now all the problems are blamed by the opposition on leaving the EU.

The reality is that most of the UKs problems were not because of the EU before and are not because they left the UK now.

I think most Americans have literally no opinions about the EU. I’ve always assumed anybody talking about it lives there. It’s virtually absent from our lives here.

I’m American and my opinion is EU good. Also euro expanding east bad; single currency for radically different economies doesn’t work out well in theory and practice, ends up saddling everyone with a lot of debt since inflation in just Greece isn’t an option for France.

What concrete advantage would it have for you?