"At a conference here in Brussels yesterday I learnt two things. First, leading EU federalists (Verhofstadt and Cohn-Bendit) are going to push very hard towards a federal Europe in the context of the current Euro crisis.

"Second, very influential economists within the EU are admitting that they got economic policy advice very wrong before and during the crisis. They did not see that a single currency without a single State was an error and that and single currency with 17 States is a disaster. They did not see that a liberalised banking sector without real interventionist regulation was asking for disaster."

David Fuller's view Interesting. I always thought it was clear that the long-term goal of the Eurozone's founding fathers was a federal Europe, although it was not politically expedient to emphasise this from the start. Well before the euro was launched, plenty of observers pointed out the risks of having a single currency before political union. They did it the 'wrong way around' because public opinion within the countries involved was willing to accept a single currency long before it would have accepted a federal Europe. The latter may still prove a 'hard sell', as we can see from public opinion polls.