“As a schoolgirl,” you paint a portrait of the German chancellor in line with her biographer, Margaret Heckel, “Angela Merkel spent an entire swimming lesson perched on a diving board” (“The New Iron Chancellor,” November 26, 2011). “Only when the final bell sounded,” you continue, “did she find the nerve to take the plunge.” A lovely story, this. And yet it offers two entirely different visions of the woman who is believed to hold the future of the euro in her hand. Of course, some readers of the diving-board story will focus on the first sentence above. Others will focus on the second sentence. But the real problem with this bit of biography is that Angela Merkel does not hold the future of the euro in her hands. Would that this were the case, for she did in the end take the plunge off the diving board. The European Union is such a hopeless mess that it collectively cannot even climb a diving board, let alone figure out whether or not to take the plunge. And this is the real problem in connection not only with the euro, but also with every other major project the Union has ever undertaken. Alas, that will become painfully obvious only after the German chancellor takes the plunge. It will be in vain.