alt Hacker NewsI mean, see Brexit; there's a bit of a "what have the Romans ever done for us" aspect to a lot of euroscepticism. Some of the more Brexit-y regions were also amongst the poorest, and thus the largest beneficiaries of EU funding (eg https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/26/cornwall-fea...)
The idea is to show people the benefits of the EU, essentially. It is unclear how well it works.
Cornwall, say, had reason to feel hard done by; it was the second-poorest NUTS 3 region in Northern Europe. It's just that they were directing their ire at Europe, and not at the national government where it belonged. All but one of the ten poorest NUTS 3 regions in Northern Europe were in the UK pre-Brexit (along with the very richest NUTS 3 region, inner London), and there's a reason for that.
(Of course, the problem is now solved by Brexit; as the UK no longer participates in Eurostat, _none_ of the poorest regions in the Eurostat statistics are in the UK!)
Yes, I remember Wales received a lot of EU funding for infrastructure and there used to be those "funded by the EU" signs everywhere. They voted in favour of Brexit.
I think this sort of things does little to convince people. The road network was there and working before the EU, it is still there and working now.
Especially, people were well aware that the UK was a consistent net contributor to the EU budget so knew that EU funding for infrastructure was not reallly a benefit.