There’s lots of focus on what is happening in Europe, particularly about whether or not the Euro will collapse and what effect that will have on the European Union. With all that short term focus, it might be useful to take a look at the evolution of Europe over the last millenium or so (1000-2005) to gain a better perspective:
Clearly Europe is an on going experiment, and it’s unity and disunity is a constantly shifting thing. This may be one of those times where it is going to go from being unified to being disunified. As always, time will tell.