Across a decade of rolling threats, from the eurozone to Brexit and Covid, Germany’s outgoing chancellor focused on holding the EU together
It was Monday 13 July 2015 and dawn had broken when Angela Merkel said it was all over: Greece would be leaving the eurozone. After 15 hours of all-nightcrisis talks, it looked like disaster. Merkel gathered her papers and was heading towards the door. If the summit had ended at that moment the history of the European Union, its fragile currency and Merkel’s legacy would be very different.
But the drama took another turn. Donald Tusk blocked the exit. Throughout the night, the French president, François Hollande, had been cajoling the German chancellor to think again. Now Tusk, European Council president, refused to let her leave, persuading her to reconvene with him and Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, warning of the stakes for the EU. “In five years in the discussions between Hollande and Merkel it was a unique occasion in which Hollande really won the battle with Merkel,” Pierre Sellal, then France’s ambassador to the EU, said. Hollande helped convince Merkel not to run the risk of ‘Grexit’, suggested Sellal: “It was Pandora’s box, the consequences of which were impossible to predict.”