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"Clearly I am very worried because the movement towards European co-operation or integration seems to have stalled at the moment and the aftermath of the euro crisis is going to make the movement towards disintegration more powerful," Stephen Tindale of the CER in London told CNBC.

"For the first time in the history of the European Union, Germany is the unquestioned leader and France is number two," wrote Charles Grant, director of  the CER, at the height of the crisis.

Tomas Valasek of the CER think-tank in London, said there was some "one-upmanship" among EU countries when it came to Myanmar. "Assuming Myanmar continues to develop, everybody in Europe wants to be seen as the one that broke the ice with the country," he said.

I am currently in Washington, DC. I packed two books to read on the flight over: "Russia, China and Global Governance" by Charles Grant (actually a long think-tank pamphlet, published by the Centre for European Reform) and “Every Nation For Itself, Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World” by Ian Bremmer.

John Springford of the CER, says the nature of Spain's labour market, with a large chunk of workers on precarious, short-term contracts, compounds the country's problems. "It is looking extremely bleak. The eurozone is projecting that we are going to see a downturn of about 2.2 per cent in Spain."

In an article written for the CER, John Springford lays the problem out clearly. In EU countries where rates of unemployment are high levels of participation in higher education and vocational studies is approximately 40 per cent. In Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland, where youth unemployment is fairly low, rates are closer to 60 per cent in some cases.

Simon Tilford, chief economist at the CER, says "There is risk that many of the good things that occurred in Spain in the run-up to the crisis are now being overlooked, much as in the case of Ireland, whose pre-crisis growth story is now portrayed as now more than a property bubble". "Spain has not done so many things badly" continues the economist from CER, for whom the key cause of the crisis in Spain was "the massive inflow of capital into Spain as Spanish households and businesses – encouraged by negative real interest rates – went on a borrowing spree.

Simon Tilford, chief economist at the CER in London, said austerity measures in Spain, like elsewhere, will not solve its economic problems. "What's worrying about what we are seeing is that very little seems to have been learned from what happened in Greece and Ireland and Portugal," he said.