The "European Project" was designed with something like the current crisis in mind.
The adoption of a common currency was just the first, politically easiest, step in a process that would eventually - its architects hoped - culminate in something like the United States, where a bunch of different geographic and cultural entities are subordinate to a central government that handles war, diplomacy, and finance.
The problem was that pretty much every European country was ambivalent about this transfer of national power to a supranational entity. The weaker countries like Italy feared being dominated by