What do YOU think should happen to the Eurozone?

[Cassius]

Ideally, the Eurozone should be eliminated. It was, after all, a fairly stupid idea to begin with. However, eliminating it would be problematic in the short-term, since Greece going back to the Drachma, Portugal going back to the Escudo and Germany going back to the Deutschmark (etc) is going to create a lot of havoc, even if, in the long-term, it may be more healthy (as you said, returning control over monetary and indeed fiscal policy to individual countries) for each country (except Germany). Alternatively, the idea of splitting the Eurozone up into different currency zones (a rough example is the north/south axiom that gets bandied about a lot) might be a more practical solution, although even then that will still have the drawback of different countries being bound together under (theoretically) one monetary policy.

Now, the idea of 'integration' and 'convergence' all sounds very nice and sensible in theory, in practice, I have doubts as to whether it can be achieved. For one thing, as has been shown by the Eurozone crisis, the idea of handing over more power to Brussels is very unpopular (at least due to its practical effects, rather than the philosophical aspects of it). The rise of eurosceptic parties (UKIP, M5S, the FN) and the eurosceptic shifts in some previously pro-European parties (the UMP et al), has been due, to a very large extent, be traced to the behaviour of the EU, the ECB etc during the economic crisis. It is clear that the EU is not popular, and the task of convincing wary electorates that more power should be handed to Brussels is not one that many governments (at least, those whose backs aren't against the wall) are going to be keen to take on.

Further more, the idea of convergence; in otherwords, the economies of the EU member states being driven together so that they are more suited to being yoked under one monetary policy, is going to be very difficult to bring about. I mean, there are plenty of member states that have failed to achieve 'convergence' within their own countries (Southern England vs parts of Northern England, East vs West Germany). Doing this on a grand scale seems to me like an impossible task.

To my way of thinking, an attempted climbdown from the Euro seems like the best solution, which is not to say that it is by any means a perfect solution, given that it will cause an awful lot of short term problems. Nonetheless, I'm not an economist, and I'm sure that other posters can give you far better analysis than I can.