June 19, 2011
When the euro became the common currency for many Europeans less than 10 years ago, it was feted by supporters as a grand opportunity, turning a historic page toward integration. Now, with the euro-zone debt crisis threatening to spread from Greece, the single currency represents an equally epochal challenge to shield the broader European project from derailment.
And, in that effort, perhaps no other European leader has come under the same pressure to display leadership, or under the same scrutiny for failing to do so, than Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the steward of Europe’s most powerful economy.
Less than two weeks ago, Mrs. Merkel stood in the Rose Garden at the White House alongside President Obama, basking in diplomatic accolades: an unusual state dinner and the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But just two days ago, she stood alongside President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in her own chancellery to announce a retreat from the central element of Germany’s plan to rescue the Greek economy even as she struggled with domestic political woes.
“The balance sheet is miserable,” the columnist Daniel Brössler wrote in the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Merkel is failing to secure German demands in Europe, and she has not succeeded in winning Germans over to the rescue of the euro.”
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