Eastern EU doesn't have many reasons to be optimistic: the top 5 positions on the top are taken by Westerners after recent elections (German, Belgian, Dutch / German - each for 2,5 year, Spanish, French); out of all European institutions, only one is headquartered in the east (GNSS - Galileo - in Prague). Etc, etc.
Yes but this is in a huge part self-inflicted; with thugs like Orban, Kaczynski, Babis and their idea of the EU as a source of money without any conditions attached and their destructive behavior towards institutions both national and supra-national, it's little wonder they could not get their people to the top posts.
Babis even explicitly said they could find anyone to suggest for the top posts and Kaczynski's party tried to sabotage Tusk at every possible turn in the last term.
Point is, many people in their countries feel very differently to the leaders about the EU. Many work and marry abroad, there are lots of people from other EU-countries in eastern Europe etc. We are indeed growing together even if it doesn look like it on the surface.
The eastern states came a bit later in the union so that could be a reason for the lack of EU institutions hosted in their country. But I don't think that's the issue. The vast majority of the US gov institutions are hosted in Washington D.C and I don't think this makes Texas residents feel less American.
"Feeling European" for me means that I'm able to go wherever I want on this continent. Without border checks, customs, something else than my national passport. Being able to use the same currency all over Europe (almost). It also means not thinking about "we" and "them" when thinking about European countries and their people. I value French, Polish, Italians, whatever people just like I "value" somebody from Germany. I even went to a German university with lots of those nationalities, because Europe managed to unifiy academic degrees. Feeling European also means feeling safe because without this union of states we would most probably have wars or aggressions between some of the European countries.
I can understand that east european countries might not yet feel or experience that way. I think that might be due to the fact that right-wing nationalists are still in power and might try to benefit heavily out of the union.
As some eastern european countries are also not members of the EU for that long, structures (and power) were built or distributed around those member states, too. I hope this will change in the future and new members will also get their fair share.
We still feel like the EU is a close cooperation of countries, not a federation. Our ideas about social system are different, our economies are at a different state of development and have contrasting needs. We fear that with federalization, we might become locked in being suppliers of low-tech parts etc for the more developed regions. It is important to know that almost all big corporations and crucial infrastructure (water supply, etc) are owned by foreign parties from these more developed countries.
>> We still feel like the EU is a close cooperation of countries, not a federation.
That's because EU is exactly that at this time: a close cooperation of countries and a bit more(i.e the cohesion policy).
Without a fiscal union and a common army you cannot talk about a federalisation. Just look how the Greek financial crisis was handled. Greece was pretty much regarded as a stand alone country that needs to pay alone for its mistakes or leave the union.
In a federalisation the burden would be shared like it happened in the U.S. We would talk about european citizens not greek citizens.
The pros and cons of federalisation can be debated but I'm not sure if the poor states of the US would do better on their own.
