After the G8 meeting I feel it is imperative to come back to this. It is a matter of great urgency. And of course by ‘structural reform’ I do not mean what Mme Lagarde and Frau Merkel (among others) mean by it. That is for them structural reform means exclusively the abolition of all workers’ rights and any inkling of social security.

No, the urgency for reform appeared first, as our joke showed, that among the world’s richest states we do not have the world’s richest states, certainly not all of them, but we do have a number of minor players who are only still there by dint of an anachronistic established order fighting tooth and nail to retain privileges they are no longer entitled to.

And now back to the great urgency of reforming the structure of the European Union if such a union is to survive at all. At the G8 meeting, apart from the heads of the member states, the Chairman of the EU Commission Jose Manuel Baroso and the President of the EU Herman Van Rompuy were also present in their aforementioned capacities.

Whatever for? Did they have any say? Did they even try to have any say? I dare say both of them probably quite enjoyed the perks of the Cap David weekend, but that is hardly what they are being so lavishly paid for. The truth is these two nonentities (politically speaking) are both in their present positions because Germany (primarily but not exclusively) appointed them.

Their greatest qualification for the job was, precisely that they were political nonentities and could be relied upon to do as they are told. As a result, the devastating European Crisis that was sparked off by the sovereign debt crisis now threatens to break up the European Union itself if it is not tackled in time. And time is running dangerously out.

The Frau took it upon her puny little shoulders to thoroughly mismanage the sovereign debt crisis, through threats and bullying and flouting EU rules and ideals. What did the two afore mentioned gentlemen do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Perhaps even worse, they did do something. They just became the mouth pieces and bully dogs of the Great Lady because, after all, she was the one who had appointed them.

Since the European Union is supposed to be a Democratic Union of the Peoples of Europe, to say that there is a democratic deficit here is a gross understatement.

So if we really don’t want to install a Fourth German Reich governing Europe, in perhaps much the same way as the Third Reich did for a while, then when must institute structural reform forthwith!

For a start, the European Parliament which is the only body elected by the peoples of Europe, should be given full powers. It should be the one to appoint the European Commission, to empower it and the Commission should be directly answerable to the European Parliament. For a start.

Only then can we hope for genuine European leaders and not nonentities dependent upon the whim of various state leaders who only have what they perceive as the interests of their own country in mind.