The integration of European coal and steel markets was to make war unthinkable between European states.

True, and from a German perspective the current arrangements make war, already see as wasteful, now totally unnecessary. They have preferential access to and economic dominance over the bulk of the continent and they have a de facto veto over any political challenges from other countries as their second line of defense, the first line of defense being the intellectual capture which includes the vast preponderance of the elites of the member states of the EMU. And few can see any fingerprints indicating how this came to be.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

The question is whether the rollback would be chronological or not. One could roll back to the Single European Act plus Schengen and then what would be lost would be the layer of political integration since 1990, and none of the economic integration.

With hindsight, everything since the Single European Act was a bridge too far, politically. The Common Foreign and Security Policy and Cooperation in Criminal Justice never quite took off, the Euro is imploding under the weight of unrestrained internal trade imbalances, and Schengen is in the process of being rolled back.

(September 21, 2011)

Alternatively, the political layer could be retained and the economic union jettisoned. This would keep the useless Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Cooperation in Criminal Justice (including the European Arrest Warrant), the undermining of "the Community method" in favour of the "Intergovernmental Method"... But this is highly unlikely because the economic integration is deeper.

None of this will happen, the most likely scenario is the creation of a new layer of Kommissars (ECB President, EuroGroup Chairman, Council President, EFSF/ESM Chairman, Trichet's award-winning budget-dog-in-the-manger czar...) to the detriment of the "Community Method", a disempowerment of the European Parliament, more police cooperation to clamp down on popular discontent, a beefed-up Bolkestein directive to usher in an EU-wide labour race to the bottom, and the general penury that Merkel has promised us "for decades". I even foresee Merkel being Chancellor for 16 years (until at least 2020).

There are three stories about the euro crisis: the Republican story, the German story, and the truth. -- Paul Krugman