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Since the sovereign debt crisis hit the euro area in 2010, most attention has been paid to crisis management decisions, i.e. financial aid packages, debt restructuring or behind-the-scenes-action by the European Central Bank. In order to fully understand the evolution of the euro area, it is crucial to also look at the considerable degree of explicit and implicit changes which impact on today's governance set-up of the euro area and hence decision-making dynamics and power relationships.

A first observation is that, in the course of crisis management and in particular through its first permanent president installed by the Lisbon Treaty, the European Council and later the eurozone summit, have become the centre of decision-making. This not only implies a potential loss of influence for the European Commission and the European Parliament, two of the supranational institutions of the EU, it also means that member states matter more and that they matter according to their relative weight.

Second, and this is closely related to the first point, the German government has, partly involuntarily, moved to centre stage. Germany not only has by far the largest economy, but recently also one of the most dynamic ones in the EU. Thanks to painful adjustments in previous years, it had turned into Europe's engine of growth by 2010. It is the most important guarantor and creditor for fellow euro area member states through its contribution of 27% of the European Stability Mechanism. Meanwhile, domestic conditions have imposed serious constraints on Germany's government that have rarely been seen in the period of post-war European integration.