The EU: Hysteria-inducing Awesome, or Frothy-Rage-inducing Evil?

I've been reluctant to do a blog post about the European Union [or any blog post at all, you lazy douche], and Britain's membership thereof. The first reason for this is because it's one of those topics, in Britain at least, where everyone either goes all ultra-Conservative and "EUROPE IS BAD! IT'S AN ABOMINATION! IT'S FULL OF SOCIALIST-MUSLIM-RAPIST-NAZIS! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" or they go all super-left-wing and "EUROPE IS THE BEST THING SINCE THE PULMONARY SYSTEM AND ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE IT IS A FASCIST-RUSSIAN-GENOCIDAL-BABYEATING-TENTACLEMONSTER!" or something like that. [Wow, that's a lot of caps...]
The second reason is that I thought my opinion on the EU was all complicated and confusing and I wasn't really sure what it was [you either sound pretentious, or like you have half your brain missing, or both- nice going, Copson!], but it turns out it's actually perfectly simple. As far as the hysteric low quality of the EU discussion goes, well, half my blogs have been about gayness [pfft, like they hadn't noticed] and a third are about religion (roughly), so I should be used to throwing myself into such discussions anyway. So here goes.

My perfectly simple and non-confusing view on the European Union is this: the EU is a great body for dealing with inter-country issues like trade and territorial claims, but it should never get involved with the domestic affairs of it's individual states.
We have benefited rather marvelously from the former role. Trade is booming among the EU states during the absence of levy, and we haven't had a war major war on the continent since 1945 (in case you hadn't noticed).
But for the EU to excersise control over how individual governments govern their own citizens is illiberal and undemocratic. Presently, is it possible for bureaucratic EU institutions to overrule the elected bodies of any of it's member states on certain issues (a minority of issues; but still a minority too many). This completely goes against the consent-of-the-governed ideal which all of the states supposedly subscribe to. [Oooh, "supposedly", eh? Get you, being all cynical!] 


So I'm neither pro-Europe or Eurosceptic per se, but Euro-reformist (Eureformist?). I like the EU as a concept, within the boundaries that I have set out, and which the Union/Community was confined to when Britain joined in the first place.

That's another point worth making, actually. Since the nature of the European Melarkey has changed considerably since Britain had the referendum to say we wanted to join, it would definitely be worth having another referendum to ask if the people of the UK want to be a part of this new thing we're in. But that's not going to happen until the government decide they want to claw their way back to being a genuine democracy...

In summary: European reform is really, really, needed right now. Only then will I pick a side on the whole pro-or-anti-EU spat.

And that's what they refer to as "that", I believe.