European Blow-Up Risk - Hedge Edition

If you were looking to hedge European meltdown risk in the CDS market, who would be your reference entity of choice?

Parsing CDCC data gives us an indication of how others are hedging this type of exposure - French CDS. Initially, I found this surprising: if you are worried about your exposure to Italy or Spain, wouldn't it make sense to go long their respective CDS? On second thought though, this move appears quite rational. Assuming that Italy and Spain are too big too bail out (that is certainly the perception on the street), then it is reasonable to assume that if either of their bond markets collapse, the French government would be the next domino. So why pay a higher spread for Italian or Spanish CDS when French CDS provides essentially the same hedge? I think that my interpretation is strengthened by the fact that net notional exposure to France took off in July and August, as Italy teetered on the brink

Another interesting nuance of the data is that CDS exposure to Greece and Portugual have fallen substantially this year. Could it be the case that all those lawyers that the EU have hired to avoid a technical default are undermining market confidence in whether Greek/Portuguese CDS will actually payout in the event of default?