Πηγή: The Guardian
By David Gow
Oct 26 2011
Berlusconi tries to write his way out of trouble, Sarkozy is left smarting and Cameron sounds off on the sidelines
D-day for Europe, and dozens of Italian journalists – all of them hoping to see the back of Silvio Berlusconi – began a desperate search for that letter: the 14-page missive from the three-term Italian prime minister to his fellow EU leaders designed to get them off his back.
The letter – which Berlusconi hopes will give him a respite from humiliating criticisms of his country's €1.9tn debt and stagnant economy – was in Rome, being touched up by his advisers, but it was one of three key elements to a day destined to determine Europe's future.
In Berlin, the new epicentre of political as well as economic Europe, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was putting the finishing touches to her government statement to the Bundestag on the broad shape of the new "bazooka" – the enhanced bailout fund, or EFSF, that would save Europe from any reprise of the sovereign debt crisis that has overtaxed the powers of EU leaders to assert the primacy of politics over the naked short-sellers of financial markets.
Down the road in Brussels from the marble-clad Justus Lipsius building, the current home of the council of ministers, EU officials – marshalled fittingly enough by an Italian treasury official, Vittorio Grilli – began a new session of their tortuous, often aggressive talks with leading bankers over how to reduce Greece's debt burden and allow a second bailout package to go ahead. Later the negotiations over the "haircuts" for holders of Greek debt moved from the Lex building to Justus Lipsius so they could be closer to Europe's political leaders.
The overnight news from Rome was that Berlusconi had cut a deal on pensions reform with the Northern League, but that did not pacify the Italian press corps, the biggest national contingent in Brussels and the best-paid.
At the midday news conference in the Berlaymont, the European commission's headquarters, that letter was the sole topic. "Can't we interest you in anything else?" Olivier Bailly, the spokesman, asked plaintively. He could not.
The letter hadn't come but word was already out: there was just one page of "new" commitments and the others were full of waffle about what the Berlusconi government had already set in motion. Italy is the new boo-boy of the EU/eurozone: Ireland is praised for putting its economy back together again, Spain has largely been forgotten.
"The aim of this letter is mainly to restore confidence in the strength of the Italian economy and that of investors and markets in the financial stability of the eurozone. This letter fits perfectly with all the other proposals on the table tonight," said Bailly, without having seen or read it. None of our Italian friends believed a word he was saying, whether about the letter or the other proposals. They were not alone.
By then Merkel was speaking to the Bundestag, laying down her negotiating position and red lines for the night's two summits, first at EU-27 level and then at eurozone level. And, within the space of five minutes, two draft statements from the EU-27 meeting found their way into our hands. The three-page document set out the agreement to recapitalise Europe's banks, making sure that they avoid a repeat credit crunch and continue to lend to the real economy. No figures, of course, on the scale of the fresh capital the banks would need to raise (more than €100bn), nor details on which banks are affected. But there was one key message that is sweet music to UK ears: no "excessive deleveraging", or shrinking the bank so much it no longer lends to companies.
While the German chancellor was winning her thumping majority, diplomats, officials and journalists were assembling in the huge atrium of Justus Lipsius. This may be above all a eurozone occasion, as David Cameron rues, but the British TV news channels had sent their top presenters and correspondents.
The BBC had sent more than the eurozone 17. Jon Snow of Channel 4 News grabbed the correspondents of the Guardian and Le Monde to explain and predict the outcome to him.
In a slightly darkened corridor, as it emerged that Merkel had again put down the French and removed the European Central Bank from any substantial role in the enhanced bailout fund, officials began playing up the prospects of a deal that could be presented to the markets in Europe in the morning.
It would be a political deal, naturally, and technical issues would be settled later. Finance ministers would finalise the package in time for the G20 summit in Cannes at the end of next week. Or after, at their meeting scheduled for 7 November.
By then, the bondholders were putting it about that they had made a "significant new offer" – and government sources in Berlin were saying the complete opposite, that the talks were deadlocked. The summit looked doomed before the leaders had even arrived.
Then they swept up in their limos from the airport to the VIP entrance and again trod the red carpet – some of them possibly for the last time, such as José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, who faces a crushing defeat at elections on 20 November after "doing his housework" as Merkel would put it. France's Nicolas Sarkozy had nothing to say to the TV cameras, still smarting from his relegation to the second division. The German chancellor gave it away: the summits would be "one more step".
Cameron, flushed and speaking like an express train, spoke of how it was in Britain's interests to solve the crisis and urged "the greatest possible support for the most comprehensive solution possible".
Greece's George Papandreou told the viewers of the Greek people's "superhuman efforts" to put their house in order and how Europe's solidarity was at stake. Belgium's Yves Leterme, about to decant to the OECD in Paris, said the bailout fund would have to be effectively more than €1trn. Holland's Mark Rutte, more German than the Germans, said the "bazooka" would have to be strong enough to "show the markets we mean it".
As Donald Tusk, the Polish premier whose country holds the rotating presidency, set out the achievements so far, a leak of the draft eurozone summit communique began doing the rounds. It again contained no figures, preferring instead to talk of boosting the bailout fund's firepower "severalfold" and strengthening the role of the European commission as Greece's debt and budget inspector. No word of those "haircuts" for the banks. Merkel and her team had spent all day lowering expectations of breakthroughs, big bangs, full-range bazookas; as dinner for the eurozone 17 loomed it looked pretty clear they were right.
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