Greece has failed to implement many of the structural reforms agreed as a condition of its two bailouts.
The structural reforms, like loosening labour laws, will take years to have impact.
Faced with those dangers, Europe needs to embrace the structural reforms necessary to make its economies as fast-growing and flexible as possible.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Angela Merkel said that Europe "must implement the structural reforms today so we can live better tomorrow".
They are now at Mr D'Alema's throat, having already prevented him from making the structural reforms needed to put Italy's economy in order.
Moderating austerity programmes is a priority (Spain shows how self-defeating they can be), but so is pursuing the structural reforms to set entrepreneurs free.
Under pressure from the European Commission, which frowns upon one-off measures, Mr Papaconstantinou says he will immediately tackle the structural reforms that his ineffectual predecessor, Yiannis Papathanassiou, had postponed.
Printing money is only likely to provide the basis for a long-term recovery if it is accompanied by the structural reforms which most economists now agree are urgently needed.
And, since the package is larger than many economists expected, the government appears to have given itself some room to bargain with congress, which must approve the tax rises as well as the structural reforms.
However the Commission members also believe that it would be damaging for investors, creditors and taxpayers for uncertainty about the structural reforms to persist, which is why they want there to be precise, prescriptive legislation as fast as is practicable.
That matters because the structural reforms of public finances to which Mr Cardoso is committed require state governors not just to accept curbs on their own spending, but to back a tax reform meant to give the federal government more control over revenues (see article).
Audit Scotland said the planned structural reforms of the college sector may create cost pressures.
Despairing europhiles who groan that the necessary structural reforms are the work of decades have misread the chancellor's intentions.
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The expansionary monetary policies pursued by Japan as well as the U.S. and European nations have thus far not been accompanied by fiscal reforms required to halt deficits and the accumulation of debt, or the fundamental structural reforms required in labor and capital markets to restore long term economic growth.
Not content with this piece of destructive handiwork, Berlin is ready to undo the mild structural reforms Merkel's predecessor enacted.
Completing the prescribed structural reforms would not have stopped Asia suffering from an American recession, but it would have given governments more room to offset the effects.
Most of the talk about growth ends up underlining the importance of structural reforms, like freeing up the labour markets, making it easier to hire and fire.
Yet, governments should still take advantage of the recovery to complete structural reforms in the financial and corporate sectors.
In a recent study, economists at the IMF analysed the respective impact of deficit reduction, global rebalancing and productivity-enhancing structural reforms on the growth prospects of big rich economies and found that by far the strongest positive effect came from structural reforms.
The need for structural reforms in Europe is not confined to the Mediterranean and it is no easier to get voters to back them in the north than in the south.
But the other half of the fiscal programme involves structural reforms to give the finance ministry greater control over public spending, especially that by lower tiers of government.
If the regulators truly believe that the main element of their structural reforms, the separation of equity research from investment banking, will remove Wall Street's inherent conflicts of interest, they are mistaken.
But it is in Europe where the potential gains from structural reforms are greatest and where the policy focus has nonetheless been overwhelmingly on austerity.
Italians voted for change, an alternative to the budget austerity and "structural reforms" backed by the euro-zone authorities.
Elsewhere in the euro zone there are glimmers of hope, especially in the ambition for structural reforms.
Mr Kato also called on the government to "step up the pace of structural reforms, " and to complete a regulatory framework for commercial banks.
Gianfranco Fini -- a former party ally -- lashed out, accusing him of a lack of attention to the economy and structural reforms that Italy needs.
In order to keep the eurozone together Berlin has prescribed its medicine - cuts to the deficit and structural reforms that are intended to usher in growth later.
Still, if devaluation helped to put an end to deflation, it would offer a healthier economic environment in which to carry out the structural and banking reforms that are essential for Japan's recovery.
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