I think the strength of euroskepticism is the consequence of a lie. The truth is that the whole point of the EU is to get rid of nation states, but in the last 20 or so years, the EU lied about this in order to spare the feelings of nationalists. And no matter how gentle that lie was, we are now paying its price.
The idea of the EU emerged after two World Wars, when nationalism and the confrontation between nation states devastated the continent. You should not be surprised that Churchill, a man whose patriotism cannot be questioned, was an advocated of the strong integration: a United States of Europe.
Some might object that EU is more about economic cooperation then political integration and the abolition of nation states. But economics and states are the two sides of the same coin! Economic motivations were driving the conflicts of nation states for the last three hundred years.
Also remember that beside wars (what no one wants - yet) the control of economics is the most important task of national governments. Therefore the single market itself is an institution that intentionally and fundemantally opposes and destroys national sovereignty (and not as a side effect) - and that is a good thing.
The third major reason why we want a denationalized Europe is the problem of border tensions and minorities, a problem that was clearly felt in the terrorism heavy era of the previous generation. The only solution to Northern Ireland was the EU where both being part of Ireland and being part of UK is irrelevant. Because Ireland and UK itself are irrelevant. And so on for Basks, or for Hungarian minorities outside Hungary and so on.
That is why through the 50s to the 80s it became an accepted wisdom that Europe should move past the age of nation states, Europe should demolish national sovereignty and create the EU.
That is why the clause of ever closer integration is a basic principle of the EU. Because the EU was conceived and created to replace nation states.
But the sensible people who created the EU got complacent in their victory. They felt that their victory was complete so they no longer wanted to carry on the ideological battle against nationalism.
They were driven by good intentions. They didn't want to rub in salt to the wounds of nationalists. So they started the big, gentle lie. The lie that the EU is a Europe of Nation States. They were avoiding a confrontation - which is a very typical mistake. They wanted to be loved by everyone, including their enemies - another closely related mistake.
So believing that nationalism has been given a fatal blow they decided not to bury it six feet under. And now it crawled out of its shallow grave, as a zombie, mumbling "braaains".
Instead of carrying on honest arguments why nation states are bad and why we should be happy to get rid of them, they started the gentle lie about the compatibility of the EU with nation states. And that seemingly innocent mistake cost a hell to the EU. Only time will tell if the EU can ever recover from that.
Consequence #1: instead of pushing for more power to the European Parliament, the EU gave great power to the prime ministers of nation states. This paralyzed decision making in the EU plus undermined the democratic legitimization of the EU.
Consequence #2: the problem of double bureaucracy. The EU suffered greatly by its bureaucratic bad PR.
The truth is the EU is not more bureaucratic than any of the nation states. But having both bureaucracies are indeed too much. Actually it is the bureaucratic control of the nation states that are unnecessary. For example a single market needs a EU level regulations but national level ones are unnecessary. But the strategy of non confrontation with nationalism lead to the system of double regulations where the national ones, due to their longer history, seemed natural, while the EU is seen as an annoyance.
Every regulation of the EU should have been followed by the abolition of correspding national level regulations. Then no one would feel the EU to be an unnecessary bureaucracy.
Consequence #3: the ideology of nationalism was allowed to regain strength. You see, they are speaking the truth when they say that you cannot have national sovereignty within the EU and the EU is lieing when they are trying to argue with that.
The argument of the EU should not be about denying that truth. The EU should have been arguing about why national sovereignty is harmful. Then instead of trying to argue about a blatant lie we would have a much easier debate to win.
It is not difficult to argue against national sovereignty. Its only strength comes from its long-term acceptance as a truism.
So in my opinion the EU is in a pinch because it allowed the idea of national sovereignty to resurge and got itself into a trap on the ideological battlefield.
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