Yes, there are advantages to the EU.
But's there's also a whole lot done wrong.
I see two problem :
- The EU top is power hungry, and wants to expand no matter the cost ( created a United States of Europe ), making them go way too fast, and thus losing a lot of people, and implementing untested laws ( for example the design of the Euro which has a number of flaws ).
- The people in Europe are not very different from each other, both economically and culturally. We simply see things in other ways.
The people of Europe also speaks many different languages, meaning that you always have physical borders.
The current situation is somewhere between seperate nations and a unified Europe, and that's causing a number of problems.
What's missing is buy-in from the people : the EU is made in such way that we can't affect the big decisions, so it all looks like a show which no one asked for, just costing a lot of money.
What we need is for the EU to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And that's missing now.