Eurozone fiscal union: loss of sovereignty will be hard to take
It is too early to claim victory but prospects are good for
Merkel's Grand Bargain in Europe Angela Merkel at a microphone
in front of a German flag German Chancellor Angela Merkel
addresses a press conference on the eurozone crisis. Photograph:
John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images  If any country in the European
Union has historical reasons to fear the consequences of handing
greater power to Germany it is Poland. Yet the eurozone is now
so vulnerable, its banks so fragile, its economy so weak that
Poland's foreign minister Radek Sikorski said in Berlin this
week: "I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear
German inactivity."  Such sentiments are the backdrop to Angela
Merkel's latest proposals to save the single currency from
disintegration. These will involve getting next week's summit in
Brussels to agree to greater fiscal integration, in which
countries will be able to set their own budgets but need to get
them approved by the other