May 12, 2011
Valentine's Day is supposed to be a celebration of love between partners, but that was in short supply when ministers from Europe's single currency zone met on the fifth floor of the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels on February 14.
After a brief lull in their debt crisis at the start of 2011, tensions in the 17-nation euro area had returned and financial markets were piling new pressure on the bloc's weakest members.
Ten days earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had sparked an angry EU backlash by unveiling a plan to impose debt limits and harmonize wage policies across the vast economic area of 330 million people.
Deep divisions over the shape of a new anti-crisis package that European leaders had promised to unveil by late March were opening up.
Also hanging over the meeting was a new fear so troubling the finance ministers had taken special care not to discuss it in public -- the rising risk that Greece would have to restructure its 327 billion euro ($470 billion) debt mountain.
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