Suddenly, all the previous months' certainties have become unhinged - proof if any were needed, that Europe's basis is not yet assured.

We have the results of the Greek election to cope with and the increasingly frontal confrontation between the Syriza government and the Troika.

And at the back of it all, what Mario Draghi announced with pomp and solemnity just a week ago has emerged diluted and rather ragged in the sunlight.

Greece first. The election result was a foregone conclusion. The unacceptably high unemployment, the lost generation of Greek youth, the mass emigration, the job losses coming on top of the hardships suffered many years previously as the people were offered sham affluence built on foundations that just were not there, and the humiliation in recent years of going for bailout after bailout to harsh taskmasters be they the IMF or the German government - all these and more made the election result unavoidable.

Although these are still early days, it is clear the new government has consciously chosen an eyeball to eyeball confrontation with the EU, especially with Germany. No wonder the first thing new PM Alexis Tsipras did after taking oath was to lay a wreath on the monument commemorating Greek Communists killed by Germans.

Over the coming weeks we shall watch the confrontation build up as the date of the next payment due by Greece nears. Maybe even before this happens we will see the effects of the election on the stock exchange values and possibly on the banks as well.

We will see whether this is just rhetoric used before the election or an intransigence that borders on the foolhardy.

All this will have, already has had, inevitable impact on the rest of Europe. On the one hand it may stimulate Europe's eurosceptics especially Podemos in Spain or Five Stars in Italy. On the other hand it may push the governments of Europe into intransigence that admits of no change of the commitments undertaken by the previous Greek government. We note that the Maltese government, as this paper augured last week, has clearly stated it does not intend to write off the debt Greece incurred with the people of Malta to the tune of €188 million, money that may be small in absolute terms but which means much for the people of Malta.

At the same time, a week after Mario Draghi unveiled the ECB's QE, the reactions in Europe have looked at it as a rather damp squib, rather than a big bazooka.

Will it work? It is, of course, far too early to say. But while QE in the US and in the UK has demonstrably worked, the ECB QE seems too hindered by conditionalities and conflicting interests to really work. The best one can say at this juncture is one must wait and see whether it does succeed in stimulating growth.

The fact that it is rather open-ended and can be extended if need be or shortened if it is successful leads one to hope it may at long last be truly what it says it is: doing all it takes to preserve the EU and the euro.