First of all, I am a EU (Spanish) citizen living and studying at university in the UK for the last 3 years.
Now my views:
On the EU: The EU is a
great idea not executed in the best possible way, a way to unite and remain competitive in an ever more globalising world.
Its original intent was to be a way of trying to prevent huge disasters like WWII happening again within its reach by mixing the populations up. If you stay in a small place your entire life, you are going to be sceptic if not afraid of people from far away, which causes xenophobia, racism, etc, while travelling and knowing other people leads to understanding and reduction of the former (if you have family or friends in state X, you are less likely to want to go to war against state X for example). And by trading (ECSC originally, any coincidences with who the EU leaders currently are?), first steps were done towards this goal. Then this grew ever more by trying to expand to most of Europe, which I can understand from the people requesting it, but causes loads of problems since there are issues like nationalisms and egos that come into play a lot here. And then the economic and political union was approached. This causes many issues, for a simple reason:
NATIONALISM.When Napoleon or Rome dominated Europe, they brought many good things, but people still hated them. Why? Because my country, my homeland, my ... ARGH SO MUCH BULLSHIT. Nationalism... While many people try to unite, there are at the same time stupid nationalist movements (Scotland, Catalonia, and probably many more that I am not aware of) that try to keep people identified with small things (my region, my village, etc), which leads to homophobia and fear, and in the current situation hinders the EU a lot.
For example, in certain rural areas of Spain, there is still that feeling of "Spain, one, great, free", traditions, and many of these people would probably be against uniting more in Europe. However, in these regions many people are mostly living because of EU aids to agriculture and other areas, without those helps, they would be much poorer. Many people do not realise this, though.
Of course, another big hindrance has been the amount of institutions and
bureaucracy that it has led to, for example with the 23 languages (
http://ec.europa.eu/languages/languages-of-europe/eu-languages_en.htm):
documents may be sent to EU institutions and a reply received in any of these languages
EU regulations and other legislative documents are published in the official and working languages, as is the Official Journal
Now about the
UK: The reason why the UK does not have the influence its citizens would like to have is simple: It has always been reticent to joining (did not do so until 1973, 20 years after its beginning). And when it did, it often tried to
disrupt rather than help. If it had joined from the beginning, all in, it would probably have a big leading seat, and it would be France, Germany and UK (in alphabetic order) doing most of the calls. But the UK has always doubted it (remember the Empire?), and hence could not be given more power within (imagine giving the wolf power in a sheep farm). From a European pov, the UK has always leaned more towards the US than towards the EU (even though I do not believe it personally, but many people I know do). Which is understandable, with them being your old colony and so. Oh, the jolly old times of the British Empire... (ego and nationalism coming into play yet again... how curious)
About staying or leaving, both sides have good and bad reasons, and as a complex situation, there are also people who try to use these motivations to radicalise the populace, so it needs to be handled very carefully.
Economically, joining even more closely and cooperating could, I believe, lead to even more trade and sharing, which would help in the long run, but which would require help to try and bring everywhere to a not so dissonant level first (either by dropping the poorer countries or by helping them out a lot), and this causes problems with most people who cannot see to far ahead.
Exiting it completely would lead to a strong (ish) independent country that would, however, in the long run fall behind the rest simply by the strength of numbers (less than 1% of the world's population cannot hold the power against countries with 5, 15 or 20% for very long..., it would be a bit easier if it could be increased to 500mil (EU) instead of 60mil (UK), which would bring this to 6 or 7%).
I would personally like the UK to get more involved in Europe, but I know that that is an idealist dream since I believe that a great EU could be made (though many things would need to change).
A more realistic view that I have come to realise over the past few years is that eventually it will have to decide (if the EU survives for long enough and does not disintegrate beforehand) either all in or all out, when the political union happens. I hope that the adequate steps are given to get to the right decision when it needs to be made.
and now I should probably stop procrastinating and get back to revision... Hopefully the above makes a bit of sense and I have not rambled on and on as I sometimes do.
TL;DR: I hope it stays and joins fully, and believe it would be good in the long run, but many things need to change.