Do not mix the EU with the Euro. The European Union was and is a great project. Okay it has a lot of problems, but it fullfull its major task: It safes the peace in Europe. It was founded to merge togheter the french and german steel industry, so that no war between this european major powers will happen again. With the inclusion of the BeNeLux contries and Italy it became an economic and political project that became bigger and bigger. In the last time it became to big and to fast. Sorry to say that, but Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland etc are not really fit for the EU. Poland, there i may wrong. Its a land on a good way. But the others ...
The Euro was one of the "great ideas" of Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterand. To get the french okay for the Reunification of Germany Kohl gave its okay to sacrifice th DM for the Euro. This is not a bad idea, but like the most things Kohl handled, he handled it in the wrong way. The german Reunification is the perfect example how to do a unification of two different states. (Hope the Koreans have learned from this lesson.)
And with the Euro it was the same, so contries were invited to come into the Euro Zone which were not fit for this zone. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the whole club of soft currencies.
It would have been much better to start the Euro with a small number of contries of hard currencies, France, Germany and the Benelux contries as core, Austria, Sweden, Finnland in a first expansion wave and then wait a long time, so that the finance policy of the other EU contries could go into the right way, what means smaller depts