Germany's minimalist approach to fixing the eurozone crisis is not only leading to ever more bailouts. It is also harming the rest of the eurozone because Germany's 'ordoliberalism' is too inflexible to provide a coherent answer to the crisis.
After a frenetic 2011, what are the big trends that are going to shape Europe and the wider world in 2012? Here are ten that ECFR experts think are likely – and one widely predicted trend that we don't think will happen…
A defining figure of late twentieth century Europe, Václav Havel, has died. Among his many roles he was an ECFR Council Member, and is being mourned by those who knew, respected and – sometimes – argued with him.
The crisis of the euro has been a chilling reminder that money is about far more than coins and a means of exchange. We are now standing on the edge of a precipice, and we Europeans have the choice of shirking responsibility or laying the foundations of a new Europe.
The only real success of the euro summit was that it might encourage the ECB to step up its role in the euro area. But years more austerity and a major rift with Britain are a high price the whole euro zone will have to pay for German ideology.
The economic crisis has huge implications for EU foreign policy. There is less time for it, less money available, and Europe's ability to project soft power is in a coma.
Just as the mechanisms that made democracy function in city states were not adequate for governing nation states, representative democracies today are showing themselves incapable of managing, effectively and democratically, the system that is emerging in Europe.
The impossible is also necessary if the euro and Europe are to be saved
The answer to the EU's current problems is to rebuild from scratch, replacing the existing EU with a new, two layered structure with an inner and an outer core.