I'm from the UK and for some reason people think immigration is a huge problem here but it is widely blown out of proportion by the media

An actual problem here is austerity, something that doesn't work well for any economic recovery and yet is pursued across Europe. It has resulted in increased poverty for those who were already poor. But if you wanted to look at the disastrous impacts of austerity, just look at Greece or maybe Spain. They are better examples than Britain. It's bad here but we got off lighter than those in the Eurozone except Germany.

Immigration is a huge issue over here, plus it's more interesting to read about than about the EU's economic state.

Depends where you live.

The Euro is a big problem if you ask me. It works in richer countries like germany but it literally destroys countries like spain and greece who can't make money anymore with exports because the Euro is just too strong. Those countries need their own currencies to allow groth of economy.

Another problem would be stupid EU laws. Germany will have to pay billions of Euros because the export is too strong. I mean, really? Sorry that we were working our asses off, I guess. And it's not like we're already pumping out money like there is no tomorrow to bankrupt banks in bankrupt nations. Oh yeah, that's also a problem. We're supposed to help nations like greece who have financial problems. But the people in those countries don't get a single cent from us. Only the banks. They keep it, only thing the people get is a loan at best. Sounds fair, doesn't it? At the same time, the banks refuse to pay out people their savings if they need the money themselves.

So yeah, there's a lot of things going wrong in Europe. And if you ask me, the EU is the main problem. We need to build a new union from scratch. A union itself is a good thing, but not the way we're seeing it right now.

Corruption in Italy? Pfft.

I'll show you true corruption:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Spain

Even better, here's the translated spanish Wikipedia entry:

http://translate.google.es/translate?sl=es&tl=en&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupci%25C3%25B3n_en_Espa%25C3%25B1a&act=url

In a pretty table:

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=1&hl=es&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.es&sl=es&tl=en&u=http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Casos_de_corrupci%25C3%25B3n_pol%25C3%25ADtica_en_Espa%25C3%25B1a&usg=ALkJrhhZYa7kGUYiXDDoAtxUylQMGi6zBQ

what about stuff like a centralised EU where countries are slowly giving up their own autonomy?
Where european parliament members and other functionaries are filling their pockets by doing jack shit

No, we won't. It's populism. The EU announced to bill us fo so many stupid reasons, but they never did. Germany is one of the main reasons the EU crisis got out of hand because we broke the stability criterias back in the day as one of the first countries, but nothing happened, no penalties at all. The EU won't openly attack the only nation that is keeping the Euro or the whole EU alive. If they actually penalized us for doing what capitalism is meant for this would probably be the final reason people would start openly attack the EU and other nations politics. Right nor most of the people are just complaining about states like Greece, Spain or Italy  (I won't comment on that), but nothing really serious. So giving the society more room for aggression would be the most stuid thing the EU could do and I'm pretty sure they know that. Unfortunately the combination of SPD/CDU is the worst shit that could have happened for tax payers. Remember how the SPD wanted to generalise the debts of all EU nations so we pay for all of them? Would never happen with the FDP, but obviously the political society in germany is beyond stupid, otherwise the CDU would not have gotten over 40%.

But at the end of the day, the EU will be happy with the gazillions of Euros we're practically handing out for free at this point so that people in France can receive their pension with 62 and we will be happy to export our shit to them so they give us our money right back. That's the way the Euro zone is working now and it won't change, since our main export competitor (China) will have to up their export prizes in form of higher wages because of social unrest and the Yuan will keep increasing its value. Otherwise China would destroy everything anyway with their insane technical davancement speed and work potential. If we stop exporting we stop paying for the whole Eurozone (I man how could we?), easy as that. So they can pick which outcome they prefer. And I'm sorry, we have some foreigners from crizis-zons working here or in adjacent companies. They are super friendly and all, but the work rate of many of them is pretty awful nevertheless.

Someone should start telling the people in some minor EU nations that they cannot survive without the Euro, the EU or Germany. Countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Austria are only doing so well because they are adjacent to Germany and doing a ton of trading/financial management/logistic with us. A country like Greece, which is miles away from the center, has no chance on its own in this day and age. I'm no fan of a european country, but it will happen at one point, or most european countries will just drop dead, including the "bigger" ones. Maybe the northern ones might survive. Those baltics, they've been doing well forever now instead of complaining 24/7.

Most people from countries affected from the crisis don't even now how the euro works, seriously. They think if Germany left the Euro they could just export their shit because the Euro value would plummit within days. They might wanna check there stores afterwards and be glad to see that their coffee suddenly costs 2.000 €, their country goes bankrupt within days because every investor will withdraw every cent they have invested in every EU country (why would you invest in something (Euro, bonds) if you know its value is going to go down FAST) and that exporting is not as easy as being cheap. Otherwise no one would buy from us anyway, because our products are already more expensive than stuff from the US or China. In addition, foreign investors will come back to those countries, not to invest, but to buy those countries empty. It won't be Greece anymore, it will be SAPgistan, Microsoftworld or Appletown. It's not that easy, the crisis is largely based on inferior infrastructure and production in the weaker countries. So instead of blaming other countries they should start blaming their former governments.

Other than that there is nothing to complain about for us right now.  Maybe the demographs, but it's boring and I don't really think too highly of these 50 year predictions. Too much stuff can happen during that time.

How about leftist morons presenting their ass to islamic extremists in the name of tolerance

Immigration is only used by some people (who I'm not going to describe as I'd get banned) to generate hate saying that people have no job because immigrants take it, or that wages are small because immigrants work for next to nothing. Truth is immigrants are willing to accept any job that most natives don't want to do and that the low wages are imposed by the ones who hire them, not by them.

I think one of the problems is that there is and never will be an European Union in the way some want. The cultural differences between each region make that impossible. And until the north European countries (they are the ones that want to impose their own way to the rest) realize that, there will still be problems.

There will be a European Union/nation whatever. I'm pretty sure we're going to see a unified Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark even within our regular life cycle. Not because we want to, but because we have to. I don't know about the other countries. Unifying with the southern countries would be like the Unification with eastern Germany, which cost us trillions of Euros, but at the end of the day the "message" will be more important.

And have you ever been to a bigger German city? There are huge areas where you won't hear a word of German. When I'm going to a smaller doctor here it's practically russian and some arabic languages the whole time. I'm pretty sure it's the same in the UK. At the end of the day culture means nothing if people cannot work or eat. Right now a unified EU would still be the strongest economy in the world (especially as you could expect insane growth rates because of the production and infrastructure building in lots of nations), I don't know how it's going to be in 30-40 years. People in Spain (as an example) would be astonished if they unified with Germany or Austria and we would start real building infrastructure there . And yes, I've been to Spain quite a lot and not only Mallorca ... you're infrastructure is pretty sad over there, sorry. The same applies to Italy. I was shocked how lots of parts of a city like Rome looked.  Your government wasted a lot of tax ... I think the benefits of such a nation would probably overcome the sceptisism afterwards. But there is always a risk of failure of course, but if you don't try you'll never know.

China wants to form something like an Asian-EU around themselves in eastern Asia. So they'd rule over 2-3 billion (!) people in that area and impose their political and financial system onto them. The US government is actualy fighting for that domestic market not to happen, because it could mean the end of western hegemony forever.

And yes, my arguments are simplified. There would be no use of throwing around deep economical shit. So some things might seem superficial, sorry :/