The euro, the single currency that 16 European Union countries share, is usually highlighted as one of the main achievements of the European project; a rare example of 'success' in what has increasingly become a beleaguered tale of EU infighting and lack of vision.
Recent weeks have seen the euro coming in for a pummeling, sending ripples across global markets.
It is especially hitting banks and other institutions with broad exposure to the sovereign debt of the European countries in most troubled Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
There are knock-on effects for the rest of the world, including the possibility of increasing costs of borrowing and a destabilisation of currency markets.
But at the heart of the matter lie not bonds and debt, but a political crisis that is posing a question mark before the very future of the EU.
The Union stands exposed as an entity that is wracked by the fundamental contradiction that while its member states are willing to cede a degree of their sovereignty to Brussels, the limits of this willingness remain sharply circumscribed.
The result of this tension is a monetary union that features a common currency without a matching fiscal or political union.Thus, although the European Central Bank sets interest rates for the eurozone, it does so in a vacuum, with constituent governments retaining control over fiscal and economic policy.
Before the euro was introduced, exchange rate adjustments served to dispel tensions resulting from the disparate levels of economic development of different European countries.But, now the individual members of the common currency zone lack the option of adapting to a crisis by devaluing their currency.
The large disparities between eurozone nations have been thrown into sharp relief by the global economic crisis. On the one hand you have the unflatteringly named PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain), all of whom are finding accruing debt increasingly expensive, leading to the spectre of state bankruptcy. The worst of the lot is Greece. Its economy shrank by 1.2 per cent in 2009, but Athens started with a deficit of 7.7 per cent of GDP in 2008, which reached 12.7 per cent last year.Having been found out to be cooking its books for years, Greece's public debt is expected to break 120 per cent of output.
The poor economic condition of the PIGS, in particular Greece, is throwing up a conundrum for the large, surplus economies of the eurozone like France, Germany and the Netherlands.
The EU last week approved, under condition of unprecedented scrutiny, Greece's efforts to tame its debt crisis, including measures like a public salary freeze, an increase in petrol taxes and a hike in retirement age.
With Greek unions up in arms, however, there is a distinct possibility that the measures may not be implemented.
The result would be a Greek default that would leave the eurozone as a whole between a rock and a hard place.
Less than two years ago in May 2008, the European Commission published an analysis of the European monetary union, calling it 'an achievement of strategic importance for the EU, and indeed for the world at large, in which Europe has become a pole of macroeconomic stability, especially welcome in times of financial turbulence.'
Today, the furrowed brows of Brussels' powers-that-be tell a different story.
The newly appointed President Herman Van Rompuy and other European leaders are holding a flurry of meetings to discuss the possible alternatives in the event of an emergency bailout is needed for Greece.
There are three options on the table, none of which are finding immediate takers. The first is to issue a common eurozone bond, which would be placed at Greece's disposal.
But countries with good credit, like Germany, are opposed to the idea because of the higher interest rates that would result.
An alternative would be bilateral financial aid with economically healthy countries in the eurozone taking out loans on the financial market at good rates and passing these on to Greece.
The final option is an old-style IMF bailout, perhaps the most sensible of the choices, but one which is politically unacceptable to Brussels.
For the IMF to come to Greece's rescue would be a slap in the face of EU, implying that it cannot take care of its own house and requires an institution that has always been skeptical of the euro to act as saviour.
IMF interference in Greece, Brussels fears would show up the euro as neither a resounding success nor an achievement of strategic importance for the EU.
It is, thus, likely that if push comes to a shove, the eurozone's better-off economies will lend a helping hand to their Greek cousins, grumble though they may while doing so.
The problem is that while such action might stave off a Greek bankruptcy, it will do little to resolve the central structural contradictions in the design of the monetary union, which, in the absence of greater political and economic harmonisation, will remain susceptible to repeated crises.
And it will do little to alleviate the general pall of gloom that blankets the EU, a region that despite representing the world's largest trading bloc, increasingly finds itself outpaced by the robust performance of emerging economies in the East.
