Press

"Merkel, together with the German economic establishment, is responsible for the European debt crisis deepening to the point where the euro could fall apart," said Simon Tilford, chief economist with the London-based think-tank, the Centre for European Reform.

"This may not be politically feasible," says Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank. "A fiscal union and eurobonds could help, but it will mean the southern countries giving up economic sovereignty. Berlin could destroy the euro if it goes on like this. "Its over-zealous discipline and austerity medicine is not going to work. Besides all this economic government stuff is irrelevant to the euro crisis. It's now a crisis of growth, of banking, with liquidity drying up.

"Greece can always choose to leave. As long as all this is between freely consenting adults, it's not that undemocratic." Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform.

"Any move to exclude countries would clearly be targeting Greece, among others, which has been a problem for Schengen ever since it joined in 2000," says Hugo Brady, fellow at the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think-tank.

Charles Grant, the director of the think-tank Centre for European Reform, said: "In opposing the bond purchase scheme they are basically saying the euro should not survive in its current form. The only reason the ECB is buying these bonds is to prop up the current system." Mr Grant argued that if Mr Stark's departure led to a more united ECB then it would be good news. "I hope Mr Weidmann learns to be a team player, which Weber and Stark weren't," he said.

Simon Tilford, the chief economist of the Centre for European Reform in London, is among those who say Europe should not be looking to the United States or China or Japan for much additional help — at least for now. "What we'll see in coming months is the Americans and Asians will become more open in their expression of concern about way the Europeans are handling the crisis, because unless they do address key problems, including the banks, there is a risk this is going to trigger a Lehman 2 … They recognise Europe's strategy is not working, and they are starting to panic."

Inaction to fix the banking sector also troubles markets, said Simon Tilford, an economist with the Centre for European Reform in London, because it "highlights a willful refusal to recognise the core of the crisis, which is the collapse of economic activity and low economic growth." Without growth, he said, there is no easy way forward; growth cannot be produced by austerity or by structural reforms, even if those may help later.

"The court ruling removes a substantive obstacle, but there’s no doubt that the situation still looks pretty grave," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. The underlying problems of heavily indebted states and weak, undercapitalised banks still have to be addressed to find a long-term solution, Mr. Tilford said.

Some defence experts, like Tomas Valasek of the London-based Centre for European Reform, suggest that Washington's diplomacy worked, in that during the Libyan conflict "the allies established a new division of labour for NATO operations on Europe's borders, which should be encouraged."