Maybe the Convergence Criteria and the Growth and Stability Pact were macroeconomic nonsense, and lately the Competitiveness Pact Pact for the Euro Euro-Plus Pact is just ideological shock doctrine.

Without a negative feedback mechanism for limiting the growth of internal trade imbalances, and with arbitrary constraints on fiscal policy and an ideological prohibition of "printing money" the thing was primed for a blow-up. We're actually unfortunate that the global financial crisis started with the subprime crisis and acted as a trigger for the Eurozone crisis, allowing people to pretend that all was well with the Eurozone had it not been for contagion from across the Atlantic.

Economics is politics by other means