EU leaders issued dire warnings today that the entire 60-year-old European Union could be torn apart by the eurozone debt crisis, as the risk of Greece defaulting grows.
Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said that the bloc which now counts 27 member states could be destroyed by the debt crisis dragging down the currency area.
"Europe is in danger," Rostowski told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, even warning that "war" could return to the continent in the future if the bloc crumbled.
"If the eurozone breaks up, the European Union will not be able to survive, with all the consequences that one can imagine."
The eurozone comprises 17 of the 27 EU countries.
Rostowski warned that the "current crisis, if it continues in such an unpredictable way, will have major repercussions," with unemployment possibly doubling in some countries if it drags on for one or two more years.
European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso agreed with the Polish minister.
"We are confronted with the most serious challenge of a generation. This is a fight for the jobs and prosperity of families in all our member states," Barroso told the European MPs.
"This is a fight for the economic and political future of Europe. This is a fight for what Europe represents in the world. This is a fight for European integration itself," he said.
Barroso again pressed eurozone governments to ratify a second Greek bailout worth 160 billion euros ($217 billion) agreed in July, but snarled up with problems in Finland, Slovakia and the Netherlands at least.
The commission leader exhorted Greece to implement even wider economic reforms, and the EU to end long-running negotiations between member states and the European Parliament on tightened cross-border economic governance.
Barroso said the solution was to have "more Europe, not less Europe," but said there were increasing signs that France and Germany were "re-nationalising" eurozone decision-making.
Again later on Wednesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were to hold telephone talks with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.
Barroso repeated to lawmakers that the commission will shortly present its ideas on the introduction of mutualised "eurobonds," which would see all eurozone states guarantee each others' government borrowings.
Germany, the biggest state in the EU with the eurozone's lowest borrowing costs, has ruled out such an approach.
Barroso said some of the options to be presented could be implemented within the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, but others would require amendments, which would prolong any plans to introduce eurobonds.
"But we must be honest: this will not bring an immediate solution for all the problems we face and it will come as an element of a comprehensive approach to further economic and political integration," Barroso said.
Commerzbank analysts, commenting late on Tuesday, said: "The question of whether or not Greece will default is pretty much solved for the financial markets though. From the point of view of the markets a short-term default of Grece is more or less unavoidable.
"As a result, the forex market is more interested in the consequences of a default and as a result above all the question whether there is a risk of contagion effects for other countries."