The end of consensus at the EU

The biggest fallout of the Greek debacle is going to be the shattering of the illusion that the EU could be run by unanimous consensus. In the past, the EU has always been able to paper over its differences and arrive at a messy solution, but still acceptable to all members.

The reason for this structure has been that since the EU is an association of sovereign governments, enforcing the will of the majority of EU members against a minority would violate the spirit of the whole arrangement, and we go back to the strong enforcing their policies against the weak, which was what got Europe into the whole mess of wars of the last century etc in the first place.

Given the gulf between different members of the EU, it's basically impossible to resolve this situation at an EU level, the only result can be that nothing happens at the EU levels, and individual governments sort out the mess on their own.