Should I apply for Italian citizenship? The question has been nagging me ever since the EU referendum was announced. For 35 years I have lived in Italy as a British citizen. My three children were born here and all went through the Italian education system. For 22 years I have taught at the university in Milan. But if Britain leaves the EU, inevitably my status in Italy will change.

The same is true for the 1.26 million UK citizens living in the EU’s other 27 member states. At best we will have to start filing for right-to-stay papers; at worst we will be asked to leave. For me, such a turn of events would be a disaster. Everything I have is here. Above all, my sense of home. Which makes me wonder why I didn’t apply for citizenship years ago. Brexit is forcing me to clarify my identity.

This is my problem, just as it is the problem of about 2% of British citizens, plus of course the 3 million or so EU citizens living in the UK.

This is hardly a reason for Britons to choose to stay. The fact is that for all the excellent things the EU has given us, above all this right to live and work where we like in such a large and diverse area, there are clearly huge problems with the organisation: its interminable red tape, its wastefulness, its crazy agricultural policy, its subjection of so many smaller states to a Franco-German or, more recently, German, agenda and so on.

In general, the EU’s uncertain status – is it a superstate or a free trade area? – makes it extremely difficult to know what to expect of it, what to rely on it for, or where it might be heading. Because so many of its members have different ideas about its purpose, decision-making is painfully slow and almost never transparent. One rarely feels satisfied by a ruling of the EU. One rarely understands how it was arrived at.

The interested parties have thrown figures at the electorate in an attempt to excite and scare: the jobs that will be won or lost; the imports and exports; the stock market; national security; our American partners; Asian investments; the numbers of migrants; and so on. Most of the predictions on both sides of the divide are notional, self-serving. Clearly, there will be upheaval if Britain leaves the EU, but the overall outcome cannot be predicted.

It’s a tough call. Britain is already outside the eurozone and most people feel this was a lucky escape. In Italy nothing has been clearer in the past 10 years than that joining a single currency while still in a state of competition with its other more powerful users was folly, especially since the rules of the game were largely determined by the most powerful competitor of all and did not make provisions for the sufferings of those who had been unwise to join in the first place.

To complicate matters further, the globalisation process hasn’t brought EU countries culturally much closer to one another. To my mind this is the union’s greatest failure. We all read far more American books than German books, see more American films, follow the US elections and so on. This is as true in Rome or Madrid or Paris as it is in London. Overwhelmingly, English is the second language in Europe, and the US, as it were, our second life. Yet when it comes to deciding monetary and trade policies we are restricted and conditioned by cultures we know little about. Above all, Germany.

Yet Europeans are our neighbours. In or out, we have to live with them. A century of wars suggests that it might be wise to have the big European powers routinely subjected to a little of our influence, as we are subjected to theirs. If the EU is hardly inspiring, it is also true that is has not yet bred any monsters. Undoubtedly, if Britain leaves, the union will change: Germany will be even more dominant; Britain will cease to have any influence on the direction of a conglomerate of nations whose goodwill is crucial for British prosperity.

On the other hand, with Brexit the country would be free to make a mess of things on its own.

What a decision to be called to make!

Either way, it’s time perhaps I prepared to speak the fatal words: Giuro di essere fedele alla Repubblica e di osservare la Costituzione e le leggi dello Stato …