On Monday the former president of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, argued that the EU was becoming both dominated and neglected by Germany.
"Is the Europe that is emerging from the euro crisis a German one? During the euro crisis, power in the EU seems to have shifted towards one national capital in particular, Berlin," she wrote in Warsaw's Gazeta Wyborcza, together with Portugal's former European commissioner Antonio Vitorino. "Germany, it seems, is becoming a 'geo-economic power' driven by the needs of its export sector.