balcanização

None the less, the virtual suspension of the democratic process that euro membership seems increasingly to demand should be viewed with alarm. Legitimacy, it appears, is expendable; the single currency is not. From the start, the march to European unification has always implied an erosion of sovereignty. But we seem to be reaching the point where the diktats of a small policy elite vastly outweigh the decisions of national parliaments.
A particularly unhealthy development is the emergence of the “Frankfurt Group”, a shadowy collection of senior policymakers, to drive through the measures thought necessary to save the euro. Its reported make-up – Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde, Nicolas Sarkozy, Mario Draghi, José Manuel Barroso, Jean-Claude Juncker, Herman van Rompuy and Olli Rehn, with external powerhouses such as Barack Obama occasionally allowed in by invitation – gives no reason for confidence. Nothing any of them has done to date has succeeded in stemming the crisis. On the contrary, their actions have often made matters worse. If the definition of madness is to do the same thing repeatedly and expect different outcomes, this collection of latter-day Napoleons would quickly be confined to the asylum. A policy agenda that has consistently failed is scarcely more likely to succeed if pursued more decisively and oppressively through a European equivalent of the Chinese Politburo.
Telegraph