What do you think?

I'm British and Canadian and I have lived here for two years...Utopia?  No.  A good idea and a good step forward?  Definitely.

I left England for France twenty years ago because France still valued community and family values, because respect for the older generations was still perfectly 'natural'. Because villages of 3,000 people still had boulangeries and butchers and flower shops and small DIY stores and hairdressers, while in the UK the equivalent size community was lucky if it had an Indian takeaway restaurant. Because the UK was modelling its quality of life ideal on the 'American Dream' - which boils down to money, appearances and looking after number 1, a credit-based economy, which seemed unsustainable to me at the time (witness what is going on now). France, Spain, Italy were a couple of decades behind - and that did me just fine.

Now things are catching up fast, to retain competitive economies Mediterranean Europe has been dragged reluctantly along the same path. Countries don't just lose their independence when they become part of a whole such as the EU, they become part of a system that is modelled on the US.

So here I am in Thailand, as much as possible!

I know this doesn't quite answer the question posed in the spirit intended, but I thought I would add my tuppence-worth anyway . No, the EU is certainly not utopic!