Market turbulence coursing through Europe's most heavily indebted countries is only deepening a leadership crisis stemming from an anti-Brussels backlash in member states, experts warned on Thursday. 'Where is the president of the European Council? What is the president of the European Commission doing? Is there a European (Union) driver managing the Greek crisis?' These were questions posed by European lawmaker Philippe Juvin, a leading member of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's party. He was referring to sluggish decision-making on a planned multi-billion euro (dollar) bailout of Greece that will, the EU said on Thursday, be ready within days after months of rising pressure on the markets. Over and above Greece, it's the entire euro area that has suffered -- with attacks from market speculators also targeting Portugal and Spain. And as the common currency is the key expression of so-called 'ever closer union' -- it is the post-war drive for greater political integration which has also stalled. The 27-member bloc is still an attraction for satellite states, but after a difficult round of enlargement into the former Soviet sphere, Europe is toiling to be seen as a global power in a new world where China and other emerging economies are surging forward. 'With globalisation, the question is: what's left of the European model, and Europe's place in global governance.... I'm very worried,' French Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche said last week. Experts wonder if weak members of the 16-nation eurozone could end up being kicked out, reviving old doubts about the wisdom of monetary union. The European parliament's leading Green member, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, says the EU's management of the issue has been 'catastrophic' by deferring to Chancellor Angela Merkel's domestic priorities. In the immediate post-war phase of European construction, an apology for Nazism underpinned pro-European decisions taken then in Bonn. But today's generation of reunited German leaders does not have the same qualms about placing national interest first, analysts said. An expert at the European Commission, who insisted on remaining anonymous, reckons that a 'lack of German leadership' over Greece 'has greatly damaged the EU institutions.' While Paris, Madrid and Rome have argued consistently for solidarity to be shown to Athens, the new EU president Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton, its foreign envoy, have been stuck, or chosen to remain, in backseat roles. Despite the institutional silence, the head of the commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has taken calculated risks by speaking out against Merkel's caution, but his executive has at no point led the debate or driven the solution. Today, inter-governmental management of the EU is back in vogue, instead of Europhile Brussels mandarins running the show. The leading Liberal in the European parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, said on Thursday that the Greek crisis 'proves that an inter-governmental approach which demands unanimity does not work.' He said that a 'community' approach, led by the European Central Bank and the commission, 'would have produced a very different result,' suggesting lower losses for all concerned. 