The project of European integration has been marked by many shifts in its more than five decade history. This history can of course be viewed as having a much longer span since the foundation of the EU. The general dominant tendency both in academic discussion and in popular opinion has been to see in that project a progressive movement towards unity and alongside this an emphasis on continuity over discontinuity. The EU has certainly become embedded in its member states, which have been irreversibly transformed as a result of European integration, and the various enlargements of the EU can be seen as a continuation of a project of systemic integration that began in the post-Second World War period. The crisis that escalated in 2012, with the prospect of Greece's exit from the EU at least as a possible development, suggests a shift of a different nature and the possibility of a rupture that calls into question a narrative of continuity and one of progressive integration based upon the institutionalization of solidarity.