Frankfurt: With Greece overdrawn and no one eager to foot the bill, Europe's debt crisis has exposed a fundamental weakness among the 16 countries that share the euro: different and often diametrically opposed approaches to spending don't make for a happy union.
By telling Greece they stand shoulder-to-shoulder as it struggles to rein in a runaway deficit and impose austerity measures, but offering little more than moral support, the European Union's biggest hitters Germany and France only slowed the market contagion afflicting Greece, and did not cure it.
As a result, analysts, politicians and observers contend, that may brake momentum for countries like Latvia adopting the beleaguered euro. More broadly, it could force Europe, already in a winter of growing discontent, to reconsider how much of a union it really wishes to be.
Its spending rules limiting deficits to 3 per cent of economic output have turned out to be more an honour system than a fiscal anchor. Can they be toughened to stop funny business like that in Greece, which faked budget numbers for years?
Who pays if someone defaults? If countries that obey the rules pay for those that don't, won't more countries misbehave?
If the answers mean moving authority from national capitals to the EU executive in Brussels, will people go along with that?
Flashpoint
In Greece, the flashpoint for the debate, Stavros Lygeros, a columnist for the Kathimerini daily newspaper, wrote on Friday that the financial crisis brought "not only the collapse of our model of kleptocracy, but also the EU's innate failings".
Five years ago referendums in the Netherlands and France overwhelmingly rejected a proposed EU constitution that the public saw as further expanding the EU's authority over its members. That deep reluctance to surrender sovereign power is one factor that has kept Britain, for instance, from abandoning the pound.
For opponents of the euro, Greece and the lack of cohesion among the EU is a case of "I told you so".
"Greece is a living example of why you should never give up control of your own currency," said Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the British Taxpayers' Alliance. "The British economy and public finances are in a bad enough state as it is, without dishing out yet more of our money to solve the EU's self-inflicted problems."
Rolf Englund, a Swedish economist who campaigned vigorously against the euro, said the current crisis underscored why Swedes resoundingly decided to keep the crown.
"It will crack sooner or later, because it's impossible to have a common currency for such a big, and diverse area," he said.
For newer EU members who are committed to eventually joining the monetary union, feelings are split.
Morten Hansen, an economist at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia, says the debacle could give citizens there pause. "Should they go into a zone where there are countries not following the rules and then have to bail them out?" he asked.
Yet the leadership in Latvia remains resolved to adopting the common currency. "The Greek crisis has not dented Latvia's determination to adopt the euro in 2014," Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said.
