Following the second emergency EU Summit in the space of a week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was finally allowed the media attention he so desperately craves.

Angela Merkel put her foot down this time. Although France still thinks it is a major player in the drafting of eurozone policy, the truth is that it is Germany which is Europe’s pay master. It is Germany that decides, and one would have to say, quite rightly so. Germany registers surpluses, growth is good and it has financial clout. What does France have? Huge public debt and exposure in Greece. The fact of the matter is, there is no one out there who is in better shape than Germany, and until there is, then Germany will be the mover and shaker behind the scenes – much to the consternation of Mr Sarkozy.

Sometimes the French President really does say some bizarre things. He was quoted as having said that it was a mistake to let Greece into the eurozone, and then follow up by saying “how can you refuse the country that gave us Plato”.

This sort of reasoning is exactly why British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted on telling Mr Sarkozy what he thought of the plan to save the euro, and why he insisted on being present for discussions. This prompted Mr Sarkozy to have a tantrum, reportedly telling Cameron that he was “sick of you telling us what to do”.

But in essence, the moral of all this is that countries need to be properly vetted and screened before they enter the eurozone. The Maastricht Treaty criteria were put into place for a reason in 1995. The mantra is simple… for sustainable growth, one must spend. The threshold of that spending is a deficit of 3% of Gross Domestic Product. At the same time, debt levels should not exceed 60% of a country’s GDP.

If Europe is ever to recover, and indeed get stronger and compete once more in the world, then we must ensure economic convergence and collective fiscal discipline. Countries should have each and every detail of their finances examined and scrutinised before they are allowed to join the common currency. In hindsight, it must have been glaringly obvious that Greece had fudged figures all along, and perhaps if anyone actually bothered to look at some of the other countries when they joined, they might find that they too, fudged figures in order to be allowed into the ‘club’.

Mr Cameron is right. While not all EU members share a currency, the problems we are facing are bigger than the eurozone bloc. And as he put it, if the euro goes, the EU goes with it. The markets have been reassured by the firewall which was put into place, however, this is no cast iron guarantee and Europe must work hard to restore confidence in both the common currency, as well as fiscal discipline. One wonders just how close Europe came to meltdown. We will not be told now, it is all fresh and one would not want to destabilise any markets, considering the upturn in trading. But in months and years to come, we should not be surprised in the slightest if we are eventually told that the concept of the European Union was almost dead in the water and that crisis was averted at the eleventh hour.