*  *  *  It appears to be another case of the “principle of unripe time” – the notion coined by the late English classicist F.M. Cornford “that people should not do at the present moment what they think right at the moment, because the moment at which they think it right has not yet arrived”.
The financial and sovereign debt crisis have underpinned the importance of breaking the disastrous sovereign-banking nexus – in which shaky bank balance sheets degrade the solvency of their sovereigns, and vice versa. A European banking union is an important step towards escaping this deadly embrace.