I'm not sure I even comprehend what you're complaining about.
Hmm. Good question actually. Even made me thinking a bit.
My complaint is politics in general, I guess. People generally do their job, furthering circumstances of life so that it benefits their neighbours, but politicians are just leeching on the rest of the population while pretending to be useful. I did mention a few specific things that have gotten in my way. They are not small things. They are political agreements that are meant to last. There's no legal way to prevent their disastrous consequences.
Yes, I happen to be in favor of integrating all of our respective national entities into an EU diplomatic corps and an EU army, and yes, I believe that Crimea shows these would be good things to happen for Europe and the world.
Agreed, if the integration did only good,* if the EU diplomatic corps produced some actual results in our own interests,** and the reaction to the annexation of Crimea would have been something honourable, statesmanly. None of this is the case, unfortunately. And I don't mean "unfortunately" as in "hopefully it will get better". It's my verdict on the EU's character. The EU's character is problematic.
* Ready to give up your own identity in favour of integration? The pro-integration cosmo-metro multi-cultists are forgetting that some of the population (namely the overwhelming majority of the natives of each member country) have an
identity to keep under the pressure of encroaching integration. The dark side of integration is assimilation. It so happens that e.g. Estonians are barely above the threshold of assimilating others. More likely we are on the verge of becoming assimilated, i.e. the identity is endangered.
** See my list of complaints.
In short, it sounds like you're complaining that 1950s Europe didn't create that which we may finally be ready for in the 2010s thanks precisely to those humble and universally acceptable beginnings.
Maybe this is the complaint of some in the Benelux, but in the Baltic countries we have sharper complaints against the entire post-WWII world order. We object to Yalta agreements that gave us borders as bad as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact did. We complain that the EU gives us neither any consolation for that those agreements took place or the security against their ever happening again.
I truly don't understand where you're even coming from. Did the Estonian government present the EU as something it's not when they sold it to the Estonian people?
The voting result was narrow. A third of the population was in favour. A third was opposed. A third abstained. Just before and after the real voting, the polls showed that the no-side was slightly leading, whereas the actual referendum was counted as if the yes-side won. As with votings in general here, particularly after the introduction of the oh-so-progressive e-voting, the results look fishy, smelly, stinky. Even if they are not outright rigged, they are still unsatisfactory.
Regarding the "visibility" of the Benelux, two points:
1) Post-1995, after many decades of Benelux success, the most important goals have been supplanted by the EU. Mission accomplished.
So the success of Benelux consists in the fact that it was supplanted. Maybe from your angle this indeed looks like a success.
2) The Nordic Council is quite invisible from over here too.
Could be, because the Nordic Council is a truly internal thing. They don't decide their security/foreign policies together. They discuss it, like they discussed the embarrassing submarine in Swedish waters but, for example, the countries belong to Nato or don't s they wish, or are neutral or inclined to friendliness with Russia (a personal problem with the current Finnish minister of foreign affairs specifically, not the rest of the current leadership of Finland) as per their own national doctrines. Still, in the Baltic countries the Nordic Council meetings are closely followed and the Baltic countries have envoys and attachés or whatever they are called on those meetings, in addition to journalists.