The eurozone crisis has exposed the conflict between economic needs and sovereignty. If there's no recovery, all bets are off

'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's chief of staff, quipped in late 2008 as Wall Street descended into chaos in the waning days of the Bush presidency and the new administration prepared its response. Four years on, many influential figures in Europe feel the same way, judging from president of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso's widely discussed call this month for closer integration and "a democratic federation of nation states".

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