EU advocates for harsh austerity measures say they are entitled to impose stringent economic and political conditions on the financial assistance being extended in order to prevent the fiscally irresponsible countries from simply continuing their profligate policies far into the future. There is considerable merit in arguing that German taxpayers and others providing bailouts deserve assurances they will not be endless sources of financial largesse.

But in a more profound sense, the extraordinary depth of the crisis underscores graphically how flawed are the essential structures of the EU itself, and particularly the entire euro project. If rescuing the euro requires dramatic constrictions of political dissent and democratic debate, there surely is something existentially wrong with the underlying precepts.

If democracy can be supplanted easily when “big issues” are at stake and actual voters are allowed to select governments only for unimportant questions, the vitality and longevity of democracy itself are at issue. Europe may survive its financial crisis without major disruptions to the euro or other EU institutions, but there is no doubt that the democratic deficit will have widened considerably in the process. That outcome cannot be conducive to either legitimacy or stability in Europe for decades to come.