I don't think there is much evidence that being a member of the EU raises a country's living standards. I'm not sure what multiculturalism has to do with things either; part of the whole point of some opposition to EU membership is precisely that Brussels will override local opinion, that is, the local culture. "Europeanism" is the opposite of multiculturalism.
--- On Tue, 9/15/09, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
>
> The populist bashing of the Eurocrats, however, misses two
> points -- (1)
> the utopia of European-wide rising social standards, free
> education.
> eco-industries and multiculturalism is something worth
> fighting for, and
> (2) neoliberalism has been introduced by national
> governments, using the
> excuse of Euroization.
>