For decades his dream seemed to be inching successfully towards its goal. But what we are seeing today is that the sense of national interest is so ingrained in human nature that it cannot be eliminated. The desperate Greeks, having seen their country crucified on the folly of the euro, fight crazily to survive as a nation without any idea of how this can be done. Many Germans, looking to their own interest, are fed up with having to pour their money into the bottomless pit of Greek debt – while the EU struggles to deal with a crisis it brought on itself, to which there is no sensible solution.