Over at Project Syndicate, Professor Martin Feldstein (Harvard) provides a very concise history and diagnosis of the problems facing Europe today. I would also recommend Robert Peston's BBC2 documentary entitled The Great Euro Crash. You can watch it on iPlayer.
Schuman and Monnet, the grand architects of the Euro Project, saw the EU as an antidote to the decades of war and strife that had ravaged Europe. The sad irony today is that the pursuit of ever closer union may create disharmony, resulting in the unwinding of the great Euro Project. The long-run effects of this process may not be pretty with ethnic and nationalistic strife all too real a possibility.