United States of Europe?

Op-Ed Contributor - Europe’s Birth Pangs - NYTimes.com: "The birth of a state is no less difficult. Indeed, what pessimists — including many here in Germany — see as an existential crisis for the continent is really just the latest stage in the birth pangs of a new country."

These are the words of Gabor Steingart, Chief Editor of the German financial daily Handelsblatt, and a person that has figurated often in a fierce anti-American mood in Spiegel Online International.

Joschka Fischer, the former foreign minister of Germany, and a Green Party member, a party that has gained 70% in the pollls, ie, from 10% to 17%, sings approximately the same song in an anti-Merkel mood. The Free Democrats and the CDU are going down in the polls.

Andrew Stuttaford writes on WeeklyStandard.com about the possibility of a federal Europe enforced by the abyss alternative of euro zone dissolution: "This might have mattered less in economically more comfortable times, or in the times when Brussels was not stretching so far, blithe times when voters (foolishly) and Eurocrats (realistically) could, for the most part, pretend that the other did not exist. That's over now. Building an economic union is messy and intrusive. It'll be hard to slip it through on the quiet. The PIIGS are being ordered to take a long hard road. The peoples of Northern Europe will be told to pay for its paving. What if either says no?"

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, argues that the Euro zone is going down.

I guess this is it. The EU has been built so far as it goes without the sovereignty of nations suffering. Now people want to create a fiscal federal state without sharing politics as if this was possible. It boils down to a face saving maneuvre of grand dimensions or a successful United States of Europe. Pondering a post-EU/EMU Europe might be more realistic.