‘EU summit was not dominated by Merkel’

Europe’s odd couple, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Socialist French President Francois Hollande, may be poles apart but their first double act appeared to set off on the right foot.

At an EU summit into the wee hours of yesterday, his first since election, Mr Hollande stole the thunder from the continent’s most powerful leader. In Berlin, news weekly Der Spiegel dubbed it “the first EU summit in years not dominated by Merkel”.

After five years of “Merkozy” – coined after the tie-up between Mrs Merkel and conservative Nicolas Sarkozy – the EU’s 27 members are anxiously watching whether the bloc’s Franco-German motor morphs into a like-minded “Frangela,” if not “Merkollande”, or simply flies apart.

Mrs Merkel is the high-priestess of austerity, Mr Hollande the just-elected prophet of growth. The former leads the continent’s powerhouse nation and paymaster, the latter the EU’s second biggest economy, though one storing up a sea of trouble.

At the summit, Mr Hollande urged peers to sign off on a new, if vague, growth pact next month, saying too much austerity is driving Europe into profound recession.

He also dared a long-taboo suggestion that countries sharing the euro borrow jointly in future to spread risk more evenly. By issuing so-called “eurobonds,” countries would all borrow at median rates, lowering costs for the most indebted of the 17 euro nations, but raising the bills in Berlin.

The notion, strongly opposed by Mrs Merkel, would also mark a milestone in efforts to forge real economic growth and with it fledgling political union.

Yet analysts as well as officials present at the closed-door talks said the odd bedfellows seemed set for a calm cohabitation.

Mr Hollandee has worked hard to build a very different image to that of Mr Sarkozy.

For his first summit, the President who pledged to be a “Mr Normal” took the train for the 82-minute journey from Paris to Brussels, unlike his predecessor who regularly used two aircraft.

Instead of striking pre-summit deals with Mrs Merkel, as per£the “Merkozy’ past, Mr Hollande met with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The two even took the train together.

Recession-hit countries of southern Europe – Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy – have welcomed Mr Hollande’s insistence on growth rather than austerity to fix the eurozone crisis.