Culturally, of course. There is only one thing missing to give Europe the identity you ask for - a war, or better a civil war.
I once attended a presentation of Google and they showed that they had scanned and investigated billions of documents from all time. They showed on result: up to the American Civil War the name UNITED STAES OF AMERICA was used in plural (the USA are ...). After the CW things changed rapidly and soon it was used in singular (the USA is ...). So I hope you see what I am saying.
Well, the succession of Britain is a wonderful opportunity ...
Jokes aside, nobody in the EU wants to force the English to stay in the EU.
The European Unity stands for freedom, independency, wealth and peace. the fundament is (or should be) humanism.
I work side by side with people from Spain, France and Italy. Some of my neighbours are Poles, Italians, Greek, Turks and so on. It does not matter. We all have a lot in common.
Regarding independency: The English want to gain independency fro EU as far as I understood. Now the British prime minister was the first one to visit Trump, because the Brits desperately need a good agreement with the US, while Trump has only little ambitions to help them. Only benefit would be to weaken the EU. On the other side, the US government asked Germany to negotiate the "unfair" trade conditions between our countries. The German government had to reply that negotiations about trade can only be made with the EU.
For me it seems to be better to be an dependent part of the EU as to be as independent as Britain.
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