If Lithuania did not enter the EU with specific objectives in mind, it has clearly benefited from its membership. Membership has allowed the country to catch up economically, to join the Single Market and expand business opportunities. Its adoption of the euro in the midst of the Eurozone crisis is another evidence of Lithuanian keenness to participate actively to the EU.

For Britain, the perceptions of its membership of the EU is seen in transactional terms. Joining and remaining in the EU was always sold as an economic decision taken for economic reasons. Therefore, concepts like “political union” mean very little in the UK. Even the idea of the EU being a “project” has little echo.

Latvia’s benefits to the EU have been clear. It has boosted the modernisation of the country and its infrastructures via the Cohesion Funds. It has helped reconnect the country with the West. And it has served to provide security to Latvia, especially vis-à-vis Russia.

The times when the German population met the EU with almost unconditional and passive support might be over, but it is still convinced that any step backwards would entrain even bigger damages for Germany’s stability, peace and wealth.

Dramatic changes in the Russian energy strategy and energy-based political alliances are to be expected due to the evolution of the domestic oil and gas market resulting from the economic crisis and sanctions linked to the annexation of Crimea.

Malta as an isolated country saw relations with the EU as a bridge building effort with the peoples of the European Continent, which would also secure supplies, open markets, help obtain energy and strengthen security.

In France, Europe basically expresses four objectives: peace, parity with Germany, economic development, and leveraging French power. But today, the feeling abounds that none of these objectives are really being achieved.

One of Bulgaria’s paradoxes is that 25 years after the collapse of communism and almost ten years of EU membership, it seems to be quite unhappy with the transition but rather happy with its EU membership. In this way, the EU continues to be a beacon outside rather than the reality inside the country.