[arrrg]

The EU is not other people. The UK has always held large power in controlling the EU. Obviously in concert with others, but such is the nature of cooperation.

This othering of the EU is really lazy. The EU was never some ominous foreign entity.

Plus, get better education if that's the problem. My civics teacher was quite adept at explaining the EU. For historic reasons there is some ugly cruft, but it's nevertheless not that hard to understand.

[_9MOTHER9HORSE]

Barely anyone knew who represented them in Europe. Fewer still knew what powers those representatives had.

I suspect 99% could not name more than five people in the EU machine, including Nigel Farage as a free point.

The EU is absolutely other people to the UK.

[arrrg]

This is a failure of media coverage and attention, not the EU.

And the people who were representing them are, well, mostly still David Cameron. One of the sad things about the EU is that it could never completely shake this thing many supranational organizations have, i.e. that the top-dogs are the heads of the respective member-state governments (and maybe their ministers if it’s about more narrow areas of expertise). Without them nothing can happen. They are still centrally important and involved everywhere and most everything that’s decided is done with consensus and not majority rule.

The people implementing the details are truly not that important. Do you know (many) people below the minister level in your country? It’s not relevant.

People I can think of in the EU off the top of my head: Jean-Claude Junker, president of the commission. Martin Schulz, president of the parliament. Julia Reda, cool European MP from Germany. Beatrix von Storch, racist European MP from Germany. Martin Sonneborn, European MP from Germany, member of a satirical joke party.