For all its pretensions of unity, there have always been at least two Europes – the thrifty, hard-working, northern one, made up quintessentially of countries like Germany and towns like Bielefeld; and the corrupt, extravagant, southern one, of which the Greeks are only the most extreme example. Such different countries were never really ready to share a single currency at all – and the Germans signed up only on the express condition that they would not have to make large-scale transfers of their own wealth to their black-sheep partners.