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• Position: Brief article

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has sent a veiled threat to those member states that drag their feet at the prospect of further integration.

"Europe is at a crossroads," he said in a speech in Berlin, on 9 November. "We either unite or face irrelevance." German Chancellor Angela Merkel would not disagree. "Europe is in one of its toughest - perhaps the toughest - hour since World War Two," she said at the annual conference of her Christian Democratic Union party in Leipzig, on 14 November. "If the euro fails then Europe will fail."

Both call for further European integration in the economic and budgetary fields but the Commission president appears to be of two minds as to which countries would be concerned. "The speed of the European Union, and a fortiori of...