Europe's economic troubles have forced it to continue looking to China for financing. But Beijing, which is thought to hold up to 30 percent of its reserves in euros, is driving an increasingly hard bargain.

Despite what some critics say, much has changed in the eurozone in the three years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Yet until now there has not been a plan - something that we urgently need as the euro crisis reaches potentially disastrous proportions.

Denmark is about to go to the polls, and Europe has been strangely absent from the election campaign. If the EU is to re-invent itself and survive, it must rediscover a constructive place in the national political conversations of member states.

The USA and Europe have something in common: they need China's money. In the coming decade, the three economic centres of the world have to find better ways to interact on financial and economic matters.

The European financial crisis is not just about the immediate debt problem: it's about Europe's longer term viability in a more competitive world. For the sake of future European generations we need to start the hard bargaining process over real and painful reforms straight away.

Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe in Brussels, argues that the EU should abandon its Common Security and Defence Policy in favour of the thing that will really keep Europe free and safe: a properly cultivated transatlantic relationship.

The euro is on fire, and the measures proposed by George Soros to put out the blaze are essential. The next step is a 'Federation Lite', which would at last allow the EU to work in a logical way.

The establishment of a proper eurozone treasury as part of a European executive body controlled by European parliamentarians looks politically a long way off. But that is where the current crisis is leading us.

The financial crisis has laid bare the shortcomings of the policies and institutions underpinning European Monetary Union. These must be remedied. But Europe also needs to rediscover a sense of fairness. A radical overhaul of the financial markets would be an important step in that direction.

Working out what Beijing really thinks about the euro crisis is not easy. There are Chinese voices warning that buying the debt of troubled European states is "throwing good money after bad," but others know that China cannot pour its money solely into the dollar. Ultimately, Beijing’s attitude to the euro will be determined by China’s own internal economic logic.

In this contribution to an online Economist debate on the future of the euro, Thomas Klau argues that the single currency is indispensible if Europe is to punch its weight on the global stage in the 21st century.

Many commentators are worried that the current crisis will lead to a multi-speed Europe. As seen from Sofia, that a Europe of centres and peripheries has been the reality for many years.

Understandably, European governments are rethinking their aid budgets in the light of the economic crisis. But any cuts to aid and foreign ministry budgets should be judged according to results rather than a simple cost calculation.

The longer term challenges for Europe's politicians are to contest real power at a European level and be honest with voters about the issues confronting the continent in the 21st century.

In a summary of the first chapter of his new book, The fragmentation of European power, José Ignacio Torreblanca describes how the optimism with which Europe entered the new millenium has so quickly turned to gloom, and asks whether the new reality is here to stay.