We knew that last week’s eurozone agreements were not the beginning of the end of the sovereign- debt crisis; at best they were the end of the beginning. Any hope that they might buy time for the euro’s defences to be convincingly shored up has been severely damaged by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s decision to call a referendum on the rescue package for his country. This widens the zone of uncertainty in the crisis and may well mean that last week’s package will fall far short of what is needed to prevent contagion knocking down Italian and Spanish debt markets.

All European crises bring changes in their wake. This one has already set the Union on a very different path since Greece first brushed with bankruptcy. The new destination is unclear, but here are six potentially influential markers:

1. The pro-economic growth lobby has been cowed into submission. The EU’s extreme emphasis on restrictive budget and debt management is shrinking growth prospects. But the debt crisis in the peripheral countries cannot be resolved unless growth generates sufficient income for them to service debts. And without real growth, those governments that need deep structural changes to employment, services and product markets to raise their competitiveness will lose the will to push them through against domestic opposition. The eurozone cannot hold if huge differences in economic performance continue.

2. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, and his colleagues have pulled the Commission out of front-line leadership: Barroso is fast becoming the small boy at the back of the class trying to be noticed. His five-point plan for growth and stability last month was pure political catch-up, using proposals whose ownership rights belonged to others. Leadership and priority-setting has shifted to the European Central Bank (ECB), to the eurozone summit and to Berlin and Paris. The ground is not necessarily lost forever because the Commission has important things to do in surveillance and monitoring member states’ economic and budgetary policies. But neither Barroso nor his new vice-president, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, has the muscle and the political skills to be a big-time player in the game of policy strategy.

3. The Franco-German axis is now the German-French axis. Increasingly, Berlin is using its political and economic superiority to force France into a subsidiary role. President Nicolas Sarkozy flies into Germany for crisis talks as a supplicant, while key policies are written in Berlin, not Paris. The most recent litmus test was Sarkozy’s failure to win the argument about |how to boost the firepower of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the temporary bail-out fund. He wanted to make the EFSF an all-powerful backstop for countries hit by debt and banking crises. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said ‘No’. But if Italian bonds can be sold only at rates unsustainable for its economy, then the idea of turning the EFSF into a bank with unlimited borrowing rights at the ECB will be back on the table.

4. The world needs a successful rescue of the euro. Such is the degree of international economic interdependence that the financial stability of the eurozone and the existence of the euro itself is far more central to the well-being of the global economy than many had realised. In this column a few weeks ago, I fancifully suggested asking China to wade in with support for the bail-out funds. Klaus Regling runs the EFSF and Beijing was his priority visit to potential investors last week. G20 leaders want reassurance that the European torment will not become a global affliction at today’s meeting. Will they be ready to put some money into the EFSF?

5. Public political humiliation lies in store for countries requiring a lifeline because of severe debt and deficit problems. Greece will have to suffer a resident EU delegation “to ensure the timely and full implementation” of the reform programme to which the government has been committed for many months but which still sits in the sidings. This is without precedent in the Union’s history. So too is the public pressure from France, Germany and the ECB on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to produce and implement real structural reform and growth-enhancing programmes. No big member state has ever been treated so roughly. But no big member state has needed the ECB to prop up the secondary markets for its debt.

6. German terror of relaxing anti-inflation policies is blocking badly needed changes to the ECB’s functions and statutes. Promoting growth has to be part of its mission. Berlin has tolerated with great difficulty such ECB initiatives as massive purchasing of troubled countries’ debt. Now it must allow legal changes that will embody the Union’s desire and absolute need to raise its growth rates.

The landscape is constantly changing and the Union’s journey towards safe ground remains chillingly perilous. When history is in the making, happy outcomes are never guaranteed. But they can be secured by skill, effort, optimism and luck. We need large helpings of all these to see us through the many months of stress and tension that lie ahead.

John Wyles is an independent consultant based in Brussels.