Does EU Have Hidden Agenda?

On this summer I was lucky to enjoy my holidays in Dubrovnik, Croatia, which is by some sources regarded as the pearl of the Adriatic Sea. Based on my week long experience there, I am tempted to accept that as an actual truth. People that I met there were calm, straightforward, and honest giving one enough personal space without any traces of in-your-face attitude. During my stay in Croatia, I had also an opportunity to visit the neighboring country of Bosnia-Hertzegovina and its city of Mostar. Mostar is well-known for its historical monument, the old bridge and as a place, where bloody war raged during the early 90's.

While I was staying in Dubrovnik and during my visit to Mostar I engaged in a dialog with local people concerning their thoughts about EU in general, Euro as a possible future currency, and how they see the potential enlargement of EU to their countries. The response that I received was to some degree surprising. I received uniformly negative input both on Euro and on the enlargement. People saw that these things will happen regardless of their opinion, but they considered it not to be a positive thing for their countries. Of course, some positive things such as freedom of movement were mentioned by those people, but that did not change the negative undertone. The most interesting feedback I received from a muslim tour guide, who wondered about the potential hidden agenda underneath EU. That made me wonder, what would such agenda be, if there would be one?

After good 15 minutes of pondering, the following couple of ideas came up to my mind:

1. First of all, in order to be major player in future's global political arena, EU needs to have economical, political, and military strength in addition to comparatively large population and geographical reach. This all is needed in order to be able to ensure the necessary energy resources for EU countries now and in future, tie Russia strongly to EU to support the continuation of peaceful co-existance, and allow EU to be formidable player in all coming political situations. To be able to attain these kinds of goals, it would definitely mean including for example Ukraine (for the geographical reach and correction of some decades old mistakes) and Turkey to EU member states in near future.
2. From already a bit worn out clash of cultures perspective, inclusion of partly muslim Balkan states and Turkey to EU would both allow EU to engage in more constructive dialog with religion driven muslim nations, especially Turkey having the bridge builder role. Additionally, Turkey offers very good number of relatively well educated young people to support the graying job markets of old EU member states. Lastly, the inclusion of large number of muslims to currently prevalently christian EU would help in moving EU as an institution to more secular direction as there would no longer be a single "god" entity to which most citizens would relate themselves to.

I don't think that these matters mentioned above qualify as being part of any "hidden agenda" :), but from my vantage point these things seem like plausible scenarios for EU's future development.