Ciao MadIvan,
Lots of money + lots of confusion + no accountability = lots of corruption.
You're lucky. In the UK you're debating the fine points. Here in Italy, as was the case in Spain, acceptance is a foregone concusion. The only issue that saw the light was whether or not to mention Europe's Christian heritage in the preamble.
For psychological reasons, (love of your own history and traditions and resultant - sacrosanct - unwillingness to lose a cuticle of soverignty, important Colonial past, Commonwealth, special relationship with America) but above all because of your different, Common Law legal system, I wonder if UK even belongs in the Union.
That's not for me to say, but if I were the Grand Controller, I'd demand 2/3ds approval of any state before entry, because what's really missing in the equation is genuine popular enthusiasm.
With interest, love, enthusiasm, excitement, goodwill, the problems resulting from a somewhat necessarily hodgepodged constitution can all be hammered out.
I say necessarily hodgepodged because this isn't like smoothing out the differences between Connecticut and Virginia, this is bonding atavistic enemies;
It's almost as difficult as making Beelzebub swim in a pool of Holy Water; uniting Italians who could use training from Ugandans on how wait on line at the Post office with the regimented Finns; making the Dutch who have harlots in the windows and Hashhish shops get along with the still somewhat Ancient Greeks;
Every single country in Europe loves the other and loves to hate the other with almost equal intensity. And the reasons for that wonderful mixture of love and contempt are real and resonating.
I remember when French Vintners were spilling truckloads of cheap Southern Italian wine; the French throwing eggs back at the Belgians. I know I'm a spaghetti-fressing charlatan for the Germans, the only people on earth who seem to actually enjoy bad moods. The Slovaks in central Slovakia despise the Hungarians (paradoxically those on the Hungarian border don't!); the Brits following their soccer teams destroy foreign cities. But in all this how can one not love Great Britain, Finnland, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Germany. And I mean really like them?
It's a fine mess.
For me it is unacceptable even at the moment that UK (and also Sweden) are part of Europe for the simple reason that they refuse the Euro. I have no idea why that was allowed. Either you're in the poker game or you're out. That's my mentality. And there's nothing wrong with either stance. The Norwegians and the Swiss aren't in and they're doing fine via bilateral agreements.
Anyway, all that Europe has going for it is a bureau-technocratic form of Manifest Destiny and so given this present spirit, or rather lack of spirit, the British view of just a mere Free Trade zone is the most realistic and all that Europe really deserves. Countries mustn't lose sovereignty to feed some fatalistic blob. If they're gonna marry it'd better be love. Some kind of zeal where one is truly convinced that the whole is greater than the sum of its components.
Without the Schuhmans, Adenaurs and De Gasperis, without the students rushing to raise the barriers the original Common Market wouldn't have been possible. Yes after the war, Germans and French kids did that and they hugged each other with tears in their eyes saying: BASTA! Ca SUFFI! GENUG! And that worked.
Without similar leaders and similar GENUINE forms of enthusiasm, it's premature to move beyond.
In other words, I feel that Europe is taking a step longer than her legs.
It's also unfair to the new entrants such as Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Rep. etc. who haven't had enough time to express their societies after release from the Soviet yoke.
So that's my position. While actually criticizing UK for her selfish "me me me" attitude, I agree with her, because at least she's honest and upfront, whereas most of the other countries are now that way in their hearts, worried only about immediate gain... no vision, no real glue.