Either one involves risk sharing among eurozone members.

Instead, it is claimed, eurozone members should have been allowed to default.

A few eurozone members financial troubles have become a problem for all.

Indeed, all eurozone members are now experiencing weak economic growth, if not recession.

Indeed, all EU countries not just eurozone members would benefit from such a framework.

But several eurozone members did not keep their word, and the crisis engulfing their sovereign debt now endangers the survival of the eurozone as a whole.

The dangers of a centralizing approach can also be seen in the relationship between the 17 current eurozone members and the 11 non eurozone EU states.

But the euro system means that Germany s exchange rate cannot increase relative to other eurozone members.

They have involved huge financial risks for eurozone members. They have fueled tensions among member states.

None of this means that eurozone members should be ready to pay whatever cost is needed to keep Greece inside the eurozone. This would obviously amount to a surrender.

No one doubts that Germany and most other eurozone members would prefer the single currency to continue.

With some members inside of the eurozone, and others remaining outside of it, and with disparate economic interests and monetary and fiscal traditions even within the eurozone, agreement is difficult.

If the euro is to survive, eurozone members must act, while other EU members with various levels of commitment to European integration remain on the fringe.

Ten other eurozone members are part of four other constituencies headed by Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy.

But now the ECB no longer wants to do it, and is urging eurozone members to step in.

The eurozone, it is claimed, should have its own budget to provide similarly automatic insurance to its members.

That left individual eurozone members exposed to brutal pressure by financial markets at a time when excessive private debt was turned into unsustainable public debt. Suddenly, the eurozone had become a straightjacket.

It is time for Greece, other eurozone members, and the European Commission to start thinking seriously about that option.

Thus, Germany and the eurozone core have increasingly outsourced official financing of the eurozone s distressed members to the ECB.

Tomorrow will bring additional members, such as Estonia, which is slated to join the eurozone on January 1, 2011.

Bruegel, the Brussels based think tank, has proposed that eurobonds should constitute 60 of eurozone members outstanding external debt.

States could be involved and accept losses, but catastrophic risks would have to be shared among all eurozone members.

While other struggling eurozone members also turned to the troika, Ireland stands out in at least two notable ways.

How can these far reaching aims be achieved within the eurozone (together with non eurozone EU members that want to join in)? We should probably forget about any treaty changes at the moment.

Monetary union was intended to be neither a panacea for eurozone members nor a get rich scheme for financial speculators.

Refusing to pay is not a viable option, because Germany and all other eurozone members are in the same boat.

Germany, in particular, feels that it has no reason to share its IMF representation with other, fiscally weaker eurozone members.

Fears of default began to affect other countries, such as Portugal and Spain, among the 16 members of the eurozone.

And, of course, such weekend dramas are still with us, as EU and eurozone policymakers recently spent a desperate weekend developing a rescue package not only for Greece, but also for other weak eurozone members.

But eurozone membership deprives these countries of this powerful tool, and depreciation of the euro itself is of limited benefit since so much of their trade (around 50 ) is with Germany and other eurozone members.

For example, until the second half of the twentieth century, today s eurozone members regularly slaughtered each other on centuries of battlefields.

Because these options cannot work, the sole alternative is an exit from the eurozone by Greece and some other current members.

LONDON Germany has been leading the opposition in the European Union to any write down of troubled eurozone members sovereign debt.

Third, the European Central Bank s announcement last August of its outright monetary transactions program through which it guarantees eurozone members sovereign debt, subject to policy conditionality has contributed significantly to subduing financial turbulence in the eurozone.

In return, Germany would insist on economic governance reforms that force other eurozone members to surrender some of their national fiscal prerogatives.

The implication is clear trust between the members of the eurozone cannot be taken for granted, but must be earned and maintained.

The idea that Germany would show financial solidarity with weakened eurozone members only if they accept draconian stabilization measures is similarly unrealistic.

Most eurozone members are now in breach of the Pact, yet none has been subjected to the penalties envisaged by its architects.

And we will need to bridge the gap between eurozone members and EU members that remain outside the monetary union, some of which may want to participate in the new supervisory mechanisms.

Financial markets, no doubt, will be skeptical about the eurozone members solemn commitment that the de facto Greek default will remain the exception.

When a fiscal crisis hit Greece, the financial world suddenly discovered that eurozone members had put themselves in the position of developing countries.

Indeed, the single most important question for the future of the eurozone is whether the gap between prospering and struggling members is being closed.

All of these changes concern the eurozone s members first, of course, but they are clearly relevant for the wider EU. At the same time, setting eurozone members apart from the wider EU would be inadvisable.

Moreover, the eurozone itself is a mini gold standard, with heavily indebted members unable to devalue their currencies, because they have no currencies to devalue.

All eurozone members, then, have an interest in concentrating in a smaller number of constituencies, with the EFSF representing their collective interests within the IMF.