• More competitiveness (mention 'labour market flexibility'; 'bloated welfare state', call some large continental country 'the sick man of Europe', say that 'reform' is slowing down/must be reinforced, that high taxes discourage 'investment')
• More enlargement (say it's the most succesful European policy, hint that the Eastern Europeans somehow like the UK/US and have bright ideas like flat taxes)
• More de-integration (call subsidiarity a dead letter, say that '80% of legislation comes from Brussels', the Commission is an 'unaccountable/unelected bureaucracy')

I'd say that the actual policy challenges in Europe are completely different. The biggest challenges, aside of the three you mention, are the demographic development, the environmental challenge, the low level of people with secondary education and the low level of spending on research.

SHOW THE EU SOME LOVE

The Frankfurt airport is a dreary place, so I decided to spend my layover here by taking the train into the center of the city. Reading through a stack of European papers I was surprised at the column space given to the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the EU's founding document.

With the exception of a smart Geoffrey Wheatcroft op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, almost all the coverage was extremely cynical and dispiriting. Feeling duly dispirited, then, I cursorily checked with the Bavarian man sitting next to me to see if the German papers were equally negative. Indeed they were! (This nice fellow was not a taxi-cab driver, and thus my interaction with him was only 90% as cliched as I had hoped it would be.)

Yes, the EU has run into some problems lately in regards to new member states, their constitution, and disagreements over the role of religion. But to look at the last fifty (or even 62) years of European history is to witness a remarkable success story (in more ways than one). I'd say a little celebration, not to mention pride, is in order.

All three points are false. The first one is about a pissing contest, when raising inequality and the debasing of public infrastructure and the social safety net is a much more pressing concern.

The second point is bullshit: individual countries pressy much have veto power or can easily put together blocking minorities. The member states have too much power and the European Parliament too little.

The EU just doubled in size in 3 years and is not only in political gridlock but in the middle of an internal economic rearrangement only comparable with the German reunification. It will take 5 to 7 years for all the special rules applying to the nex member states to lapse. Don't expect any new members before 2019.

Your mistake was to listen to a BBC debate, British pundits just don't 'get it'.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

1. A directly elected President of the Commission - by instant runoff voting in an EU-wide popular vote
   
2. A Common Foreign and Security Policy, and the European Defence Agency taking over from NATO - also, "force projection" is not "defence"
   
3. Enhanced cooperation - i.e., a qualified majorities of states doing more things like the Euro or Schengen. As this is already in the treaties, countries should lose their qualms about it.