Summit for one: The self-delusion of European leaders as they wrangle over yet another treaty

Economist
January 7, 2012

“Dinner for one”, a 1963 British comedy sketch barely known in its country of origin, is Germans’ favourite television viewing on New Year’s Eve. Year after year they delight at the sight of Miss Sophie celebrating her 90th birthday with only her butler, James, for company. He is commanded to follow “the same procedure as last year”, going around the table impersonating each of the now-dead dinner guests, raising toast after toast and becoming ever more drunk.

As one awful year for the euro zone made way for another, the German television network ARD digitally retouched the original sketch to create a spoof of European Union summits. Angela Merkel was the bossy dowager. Nicolas Sarkozy was the faithful butler, taking on the roles of departed leaders: George Papandreou of Greece, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain and, although he is still in office, David Cameron of Britain. (Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi is a tiger-skin carpet on the floor.) The joke was clear: summits are empty charades, only Mrs Merkel matters and Mr Sarkozy is her comical servant.

The new year will begin rather as the old one ended, with a Merkel-Sarkozy meeting, on January 9th, to prepare the way for yet another EU summit on January 30th. Both sides of the “Merkozy” couple started the year trying to outdo the other in gloom. For the French president, this crisis is the worst since the second world war. For the German chancellor, the road to recovery “remains long and won’t be free from setbacks, but at the end of it, Europe will emerge stronger”. For Germany itself 2012 will prove “more difficult” than 2011. Even Mr Cameron has seen fit to evoke “debt storms now battering the euro zone”.

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