The latest set of measures from the European Central Bank includes more purchases of government and other bonds, a larger penalty (negative interest rate) on excess reserves held at the ECB by commercial banks and a plan to pay them to borrow money for on-lending. These moves are called ‘‘unconventional monetary policy’’, since the conventional policy, cutting official interest rates in a recession, has run out of road. Official rates are already zero, or below, in the eurozone and in several other places including Japan.

This is a pretty extraordinary state of affairs, reflecting the failure of recovery to take hold and the persistence of zero inflation, when the target in most countries is about 2%. This far into a normal cycle the recovery would be well in train, inflationary pressures would be building up and official interest rates would already be back to familiar levels, say 3 or 4%.

In most eurozone countries, output has barely returned to the pre-2008 figures and in some, notably Greece, it remains well below. Inflation will be about zero in the eurozone in 2016 for the fifth year in a row according to the ECB’s own forecasts.

The ECB was slow to resort to unconventional monetary policy, pioneered in the US where a modest recovery has taken hold. The US Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, has even begun to raise official interest rates a little. Financial commentators are sceptical that the ‘‘too little, too late’’ policy in Frankfurt will work and fear that another spell of low growth and near-zero inflation is likely. Ireland has been exceptional in the recovery that has taken place over the last couple of years.

The recent Irish election result, where the large traditional parties did poorly, is part of a European pattern. Insurgent parties of left or right have done well in Greece, Italy and Spain and in several countries in Scandinavia and central Europe. In France, the far-right Front National will challenge for the presidency next year and even in Germany a new party of the right did well in the regional elections two weeks ago. The voters are impatient with the current occupants but also with their predecessors in office, hardly surprising after almost a decade of recession.

There is no centralised macroeconomic policy at the level of the eurozone, no European Minister for Finance and no significant federal budget. If there were, the response would surely have been some effort at fiscal stimulus, given the persistence of the downturn.

Instead, the responsibility for doing something has been offloaded to Mario Draghi and his colleagues at the ECB and it looks as if they have run out of ammunition. Of course, each individual eurozone member is in principle free to relax budget policy under its own steam, but the more indebted countries are inhibited by EU rules and the likely reaction of the markets.

The countries in a position to take action, notably Germany, are unwilling to do so. Germany is currently running both a budget and an external payments surplus.

Another few years of low growth, high unemployment and zero inflation will mean no relief for European countries whose electorates have already displayed their willingness to desert the political centre. Contrary to oft-repeated assertions here in Ireland, the threat to the established order in many countries comes from the populist right rather than from the centre or the left. Right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland are headed for conflict with European Union institutions over press freedom and judicial independence, while new parties of the right have made inroads in traditionally social democratic countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. This is not a surprise to students of political history: long and deep recessions have often strengthened the forces of national populism.

Some French politicians have been hinting that a British exit from the European Union would be less than a disaster: the British have been unenthusiastic Europeans. Coming on top of the eurozone mess and the incoherent response to the refugee crisis, the departure of one of the largest members would be a fresh blow to the broader European project.

The next crisis for the eurozone could well be political rather than economic. It is possible, but hardly guaranteed, that the ECB can keep the lid on the risks of another financial crash by a continuation of the current policy, essentially one of easy liquidity provision for banks and cheap borrowing for governments. But the election of a seriously eurosceptic government in a large country would place the future of the common currency at risk and threaten the survival of the Union.