Wolfgang Münchau
Former correspondent for the Financial Times in Washington and Brussels, and a member of the team that established the Financial Times Deutschland in 2000, Wolfgang Münchau writes a weekly column on political and economic trends in the EU.
Updated: 14 July 2009
The EU leaders' failure to find an agreement on the budget is largely symbolic as negotiations concern only a very small part of the Union’s wealth. More important to the EU’s future is the efficiency of the single market and relations between the countries inside and outside the currency bloc. 
Thirty years after the inauguration of Helmut Kohl and 22 years after German reunification, the former chancellor is being celebrated as the father of German unity. But the truth is that, by hastily joining the GDR to the Federal Republic, he planted the seeds of the euro crisis, argues Wolfgang Münchau. 
Only a political union can save the euro and the EU, and only the Italian PM can say it clearly and convince Germany, argues columnist Wolfgang Münchau before this week’s EU summit. But will he? 
In the wake of the collective downgrading of 9 eurozone countries, including France, it’s become clear that the EU’s policy of rescue funds coupled with fiscal austerity has exhausted itself. It’s time for Angela Merkel and her partners to find a credible outcome, writes Wolfgang Münchau. 
The union’s finance ministers are shortly to agree on the details of a protective shield for the weaker eurozone members. But in the long-run the European Central Bank and the EU’s culture of secrecy is a threat to the future of the single currency, argues columnist Wolfgang Münchau.