Eurozone crisis - Just one step in the right direction

HOURS after German Chancellor Angela Merkel secured the support of the country’s parliament for stronger eurozone bailout funding the scale of the far bigger challenges ahead took some of the gloss from her relatively minor but essential victory.

The Bundestag vote showed that the strongest economy in Europe knew what had to be done and where the best interests of Germany, the eurozone and the European project lie. Had she not succeeded, had Germany cowered and put its domestic interests first, we would all have been a step closer to the kind of calamity no one with the flimsiest sense of history wants to contemplate, much less endure.

Despite this, US President Barack Obama continued to attack the EU’s crisis management, saying: “In Europe, we haven’t seen them deal with their financial system and banking system as effectively as they need to.”