“IMO, the EU is beneficial for it’s countries as long as it sticks to things like free trade, passports and travel”
It doesn’t though does it? The EU dictates some 75% of all the laws enacted by the national parliaments of its’ member states and punishes those who decent.
We used to have a perfectly good free trade group across Europe called the EEC, but the politicos had to grasp more power and try to turn it into a German run federal super-state and we are currently seeing the results of that greed for power and political hubris.