From my friend and teacher, Patrick Barron:
Here’s the bottom line: there is no benefit that a country can derive from EU membership that it cannot derive more cheaply and with no loss of sovereignty by simply adopting unilateral free trade.
(thanks, Ed)
ps- A case can be made that EU membership puts downward pressure on local corruption. That seems to have been the case in Romania and Poland, but I don’t think it’s worth the price of sovereignty and the official, legal corruption from Brussels.