Unfortunately that wouldn't count as European, after Brexit :-)
EU is a few decades old failed experiment, Europe exists for thousands of years.
There is only talk of subsidizing EU chip production, because a few German car executives got worried.
Why do people say this with such conviction?
Bernard Connolly has predicted it all in the 90's.
The EU changes nothing regarding that, on the contrary, by being European as well as of X nationality, it helps overcome traditional national rivalries. One of the main points in recent Catalonian and Scottish independence movements has been that due to the EU, the economic and legal impact will be minimal.
> On the other hand, many people feel like their countries are constantly giving handouts to the less developed ones and feel like that money could have gone to them personally instead
And they don't realise that the improvements in neighbouring countries concern them as well, by adding extra markets and expanding them ( a better developed Romania can buy more German-made washing machines, etc.).
The cheap labor that moves is a positive contribution.
Then there's the incalculable positive from EU sponsored and made possible programmes of cultural and educational exchanges.
The worst thing about the EU is its lacking marketing. Most of the bureaucratic problems with it aren't really that far from the same thing in countries.
Norway and Switzerland have some words for you.
More likely just the EEC was the 'greatest thing' and the EU, essentially the political version, is possibly a negative drag.
There's not much indication that the trade-plus-politics version of Europe is any better than the 'mostly trade' version.
"But all those good things are only apparent when taken away, the UK is only just now learning that. "
Like the ability to give it's population lifesaving vaccines months faster than the EU?
It will take a decade before we know which actions between EU and UK were specifically problematic, my bet is that it's mostly going to be a wash but it's hard to measure the geopolitical effect and things like leverage on trade - but even there, there might be an EEC-like way to do that. Finally, it'd be much less controversial, as there are almost no skeptics of the free market.
Is Britain part of Europe? Well, it's not a yes/no type of question. "In some ways, but not in others" would probably be the best answer.
The UK is part of Europe, that's for sure.
That they use 'Europe' to refer to 'The Continent' is an artifact of their singularity on the Island. Lind of like Quebecers refer to the 'Rest of Canada' as often just 'Canada'.
It's as much a part of Europe as Norway is for example, but neither of them belong to the EU.
Despite constant screeching about its imminent demise, the EU still hasn't failed. And "Europe", at least as we think of it, only goes back to Renaissance diplomacy at best, but realistically to the Peace of Westphalia.
But the quasi-universality of Roman legal principles is itself very recent, and didn't start to emerge before the late 1700's, very much in the spirit of statecraft launched by the Westphalian era.
Greece was devastated after the German-enforced austerity after the 2008 economic crisis. We the EU taxpayers had to give the biggest loan in history to the most bankrupt country in history, so that they could repay the German banks, who overinvested in Greece in the previous decade.