The first breakthrough at the EU summit has been the agreement on the creation of a European Banking Supervisor. This task will be entrusted to the ECB, which has extensive knowledge of the balance sheets of so-called systemic banks. A European supervisor was necessary, since the situation in Spain became untenable. Germany did not trust the Spanish supervisor, which has failed on all accounts in its supervisory role. The eurozone members will only allow the European Stability Mechanism (the permanent rescue fund) to directly inject money into unsteady banks, when supervision comes directly from the ECB. This can be seen as the second breakthrough.

The third breakthrough has been the confirmation that the European Stability Mechanism can directly buy sovereign bonds of member states whose borrowing costs are too high. Italian Prime Minister Monti requested this, since his country has been on the financial market sovereign debt hotlist for a while now. He prevented that such operation would turn out to be a rescue programme, thereby putting Italy under harsh conditions like in Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Financial markets reacted positive on these breakthroughs, but this has always been the case after EU summits. The question is if the short term euphoria will pass next week's mood. This will most likely not be the case.

The reason behind this pessimism is that the solutions do not touch upon the core of the problem. The breakthroughs have all been part of short-term crisis-management, not of structural solutions. It is true that Italy's and Spain's borrowing costs will be reduced when using the stability mechanism to shield them from the financial markets. It's also true that a banking union will end the link between systemic banks and national governments. But a real perspective for the future of the EU has not been discussed. A real sign of solidarity between the North and the South has not been shown, although the press statements say differently.

Germany has blocked discussions over Eurobonds, the controversial proposal from France to mutualise part of the sovereign debt. It has equally blocked the setting up of a European deposit guarantee scheme, a proposal from the periphery to have citizens' savings in banks guaranteed by European tax payers. Talks over the creation of a political union were postponed to the next summit, thereby putting Van Rompuy's "master plan for Europe" in the fridge.

I do not share the views in the media that Italy and Spain "won" the battle. I read in the conclusions that the austerity measures are still central in eurozone government policies. Merkel's conservative politics is the true winner of the summit, since Italy and Spain have to continue their cuts in government spending. The financial space that will be created by lowering the borrowing costs will not be sufficient for their economies to recover. They need real investments in large parts of their economies. They need to create jobs and offer perspective for a generation of disillusioned youth.

The 120 billion Euro "Growth plan" that was presented during the summit is an absolute joke and served only as a smoke screen. French president Hollande really promised Europe little if this is the growth plan he was talking about in his electoral campaign. If you look in-depth to the sources of money for this "Growth Pact", you will see that most of the money comes from existing programmes. Member states only contribution is a 10 billion Euros injection to the EIB. When EU heads of state really think they can fool citizens around with this type of banking tricks, they should quickly make place for others. These times call for true and honest leaders, who do not pretend that things will be for free. If we really want Europe to get out of the crisis, we need to pay up.

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