Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are forever protesting that the euro and the European Union are indivisible. They mean well. The purpose is to reassure: Germany and France will rescue the single currency because its failure would herald the collapse of the entire European enterprise.
The two leaders may well be right in this analysis. But setting the bold rhetoric alongside the chronic hesitations and indecision of the past year invites another possibility: that cause and effect are running in the opposite direction.
The euro is in trouble because Europe is in trouble. The sovereign debt crisis is symptom as much as cause. Greek profligacy, Ireland’s housing boom and Germany’s reckless state banks all played their part. But the failure to put things right speaks to a deeper malaise.