And he's right. In the US during the peak of the financial crisis, lawmakers were correct about moving quickly to inject cash into the banks and settle the crisis before it become worse. Yes, there remains some ugly details that were missed but to stopped the bleeding and calmed the markets. Merkel instead chose to drag out the process and lead the attacks on Greece, as if that would somehow solve the problem and end the crisis. Obviously it was political opportunism at its worst for Merkel. By letting the process drag out Merkel has done her own damage to the euro. As it stands today, nobody is sure when the crisis will end, but it will not be any time soon.
José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, who is believed to be supported by a majority of the 27 member states, described Merkel's campaign to reopen the Lisbon treaty as "naïve". He said that the bill of almost €900bn for rescuing Greece and shoring up the euro would have been much cheaper had Berlin acted more swiftly, and accused the German government of failing to lead public opinion in defence of thebeleaguered single currency.
Barroso's surprisingly public criticism, in an interview with Germany's conservative newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, signalled the high-level political friction in the EU over how to restore faith in the single currency.
Barroso's staff, as well as the governments of many other EU member states, think the mixture of hard line and prevarication shown by Merkel since the crisis erupted in February have made a bad situation worse. They say that swift action in February would have deterred the financial markets and contained the crisis to Greece and its sovereign debt.
