By telling Greece they stand shoulder-to-shoulder as it struggles to rein in a runaway deficit and impose severe austerity measures, but offering little more than moral support, the European Union's biggest hitters - Germany and France - only slowed the market contagion afflicting Greece, and did not cure it.

As a result, analysts, politicians and observers contend, that may brake momentum for countries like Latvia adopting the beleaguered euro. More broadly, it could force Europe, already in a winter of growing discontent, to reconsider how much of a union it really wishes to be.

Its spending rules - limiting deficits to 3 percent of economic output - have turned out to be more an honor system than a fiscal anchor. Can they be toughened to stop funny business like that in Greece, which faked budget numbers for years? Who pays if someone defaults? If countries that obey the rules pay for those that don't, won't more countries misbehave, knowing someone will protect them from the consequences of their behavior? If the answers mean moving authority from national capitals to the EU executive in Brussels, will people go along with that? In Greece, the flashpoint for the debate, Stavros Lygeros, a columnist for the Kathimerini daily newspaper, wrote Friday that the financial crisis brought "not only the collapse of our model of kleptocracy, but also the EU's innate failings." Lygeros wrote that while a union of states presupposes solidarity, "a monetary union without fiscal union, that is without political union, is a contradiction in terms." Five years ago referendums in the Netherlands and France overwhelmingly rejected a proposed EU constitution that the public saw as further expanding the EU's authority over its members. That deep reluctance to surrender sovereign power is one factor that has kept Britain, for instance, from abandoning the pound and joining the 16-nation euro zone.

For opponents of the euro, Greece, and the lack of cohesion among the EU is a case of "I told you so." "Greece is a living example of why you should never give up control of your own currency," said Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the British Taxpayers' Alliance. "The British economy and public finances are in a bad enough state as it is, without dishing out yet more of our money to solve the EU's self-inflicted problems." Rolf England, a Swedish economist who campaigned vigorously against the euro in a 2003 referendum whether to adopt it there, said the current crisis underscored why Swedes resoundingly decided to keep the krona.

"It will crack sooner or later, because it's impossible to have a common currency for such a big, and diverse area," he said. "There's no real EU solution for Greece.

They're helpless now, and they have no instruments to fend it off." For newer EU members who have committed to eventually join the monetary union, feelings are split.

Morten Hansen, an economist at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia, says the debacle could give citizens there pause.

"Should they go into a zone where there are countries not following the rules and then have to bail them out?" he asked.

"We'll still be aiming for the eurozone, but I think it will pose lots of questions on our side about what is the eurozone," remarked Martins Kazaks, chief economist of Swedbank in Latvia. "What kind of club is it? We will only want to be in the eurozone only if it is a club of members where all the rules are obeyed. If you're in a club you want all the members to follow the rules." What happens if Greece's woes spread and the bigger economies on shaky ground - Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland - encounter similar problems? "Greece in itself is not a big thing," said Sveder van Wijnbergen, of the Free University of Amsterdam, who says Athens' budget shortfall of 54 billion euros ($75 billion) is small change by European standards. "I'm worried about what sort of message we give to other governments." While the euro zone is unlikely to fall apart, a failure to stand together and protect one of its members would be a striking failure for the EU.