If the EU had been properly utilised - Germany as the industrial core, France the breadbasket and the UK the financial centre -things might have gone better. But there was failure at all points. West Germany over-subsdised their industries, then dashed into an expensive and too-rapid reunification process that involved spending billions to restore the East German economy. France coddled their farmers by stockpiling or destroying produce and imposing high duties on non-European food imports, forcing price rises certainly in the UK and possibly in Germany as well. The UK, instead of using its once-considerable financial clout strategically, allowed itself to be bled white in subsidising German industry and French agriculture.

Result, the UK is now a financial wreck, Germany is on the point of collapse and France continues to look only to its own interests.

It would have been better if the UK had clamped down hard on the purse-strings, forcing France and Germany to be more efficient and self-reliant. But we tried to be good Europeans (despite centuries of history showing that we weren't and never would be) before finally getting pissed off and pulling out - too late, as it happens.

Now everybodys' in the shit.