Eurosceptics will cry in horror as they see measures designed to rescue a project they never endorsed — the single currency — which in the process will place even more power in Brussels. This time, however, they should see a silver lining. For this crisis, sooner or later, means the end of the welfare state as we know it in Europe. The simple fact is that Greece's near-default shows that our way of life is unsustainable. Public debt financed a collective joyride. No wonder so many people are angry. But it's their fault: our societies took too much for granted, mistaking the welfare state for a hefty bonus rather than a social safety net. 

This does not mean that certain hard-won social rights should be revoked. It means that the average European will no longer be entitled to a number of benefits and privileges. And that will be the hardest sell. Our societies have grown accustomed to buying — through cheap credit — consumer goods they thought they should have. Before long, driving a car, owning a house and going on an expensive holiday stopped being a reflection of what one earned but a result of what one could borrow, which in turn had to do with the sense of entitlement.

Simply put, we allowed ourselves to afford long holidays, short working weeks, extravagant social benefits, generous pensions and an early retirement age on top of free universal education and healthcare. Too many people came to see government handouts as entitlements rather than redistributive justice — itself a notion prone to runaway spending. Now, across Europe, for its overspent welfare services and overstaffed bureaucracies, it's crunch time.

This is what Greece means. And that is the trade-off that Europeans must accept. A more perfect union will require a further erosion of state sovereignty in the economic sphere to police fiscal rigour and spending prudence on a continental level. Efforts to delay that by national strikes, appeals to social solidarity and demonisation of corporate greed will only delay the inevitable. As the curtain comes down on the Greek tragedy, the axe must fall on the welfare state.