Well, I'm going to take this argument in good faith then and assume you're not trolling, but I'll be extremely disappointed if I'm proven wrong.

I'll start by saying that the EU does have issues, I can talk fairly about what the EU even is first, why it evolved and then talk about those issues as fairly as I can.

FD: I am pro-EU but it's not like I can't understand that people can have exactly the same information as me and disagree, the EU is trade-offs and I'm personally in favour of those trade-offs; I can understand why some people would not.

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The EU, at its core started off, as everyone mentions repeatedly: as an economic union; the purpose of which was to make the idea of war in Europe unpalatable.

This core fact is why when people complain about "jobs moving to x,y,z EU country where the labour is cheaper" they're right, but that was the purpose of the economic union from the beginning and not the EU; since that's the point of the EEC (the pre-cursor to what became the EU).

Over time it became apparent (during the cold war, specifically) that Europe is directly in the crossfire of two super powers, and each of us alone is not capable of fending off either of them, either economically (since the power imbalance in economics means Russia, the US or even China can basically dictate terms to us) or in terms of defence (a scrambled response will be slow and ineffective).

Thus: the EU was formed, to try to compete at the same level as the Soviet Union and USA. (and, recently, China is a super power).

The way the EU functions is actually the most democratic system that exists in Europe itself; no government is more transparent, more directly elected or more advanced with regards to how it decides who gets seats. This is probably contestable on some level, maybe there's some more balanced democracy that I'm not aware of, but as a Swedish/British citizen: the EU parliament is far more representative of votes than the UK parliament or Swedish Riksdag (though the Swedish one comes a lot closer).

Every time someone complains about the EU they're doing so from either a place of ignorance ("the EU mandates bananas cant be too bendy!"[0]) or a place of understanding of inefficiency (France being unwilling to release the EU parliament from being moved between cities half of the year[1]; or the growing right wing totalitarian regime in Poland and Hungary[2]).

When you conflate ignorant topics with important topics it muddies the water; it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation about reform.

Why would we need reform instead of abolishing the institution though?

Because the EU countries are actually under serious threat from Russia, the USA and China (as mentioned). While it might not be obvious to those living in the EU; the same way the presence of a military or police is sort of invisible and people act "reasonably" most of the time; you might wonder if you even need the police or the military.

I might sound like I'm fear mongering, but I'm not, it's just the reality of trading and defending as a bloc; the same is true at nearly any scale. For example in Sweden it's common for an entire apartment building to negotiate for internet, and the rates that they get are significantly cheaper than if they had negotiated alone. Apes together strong.

The downside of that negotiation is: everyone must be aligned on the decision being made, and you lose the individual freedom to choose a provider. But the result is a better experience for everyone. Most of the time you elect representatives, in Sweden this is a board in a housing community, and they act on behalf of the interests of the bloc.

Crucially, this is what the EU is doing; and what you said about COVID passports is one of those things that's there because the EU does not impose itself on member states, the EU is very hands off on many areas.

There's a few projects or initiatives which go through the (directly) elected parliament, but they often must get unanimous consent of all member states, not just "Germany throwing its weight around" as is commonly suggested, that's not really possible with the way the EU is structured, the EU is structured in a way that it's easy for most member states to stop the EU from doing something; and really difficult to make something new happen.

This is why certain problems are occurring: the French holding on to the EU parliament for 6 months of the year, the French can simply say "no" to proposals to stop that inefficiency from existing and the EU can't really do anything about it.

The same is true for any potential sanctions against Poland and Hungary suppressing freedom of the press. Obviously the potentially sanctioned country can't vote on if it gets sanctions, but if Hungary say "no" to sanctions against Poland, there's nothing the EU can do.

The EU is optimised for ensuring basically nobody is doing anything against their will, except in rare cases where everyone but 1 member state agrees; but historically there have been "opt-outs" to many things. The UK being in the country in the EU has the most asterisks of every country combined in any treaty usually.

[0]: Overly disfigured bananas are supposed to bear a classification, they're not banned: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/en/news-and-pre...

[1]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/18/why-does-parli...

[2]: https://cepa.org/what-can-we-do-about-poland-and-hungary/