By Noah Barkin and Erik Kirschbaum

(Reuters) – It was approaching midnight at a yacht club on the French Riviera, down the road from a G20 summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was telling reporters about her decision to block a loan to Greece, when suddenly her finance minister interrupted to set the record straight.

Wolfgang Schaeuble told the journalists that it had been his idea to stop the flow of aid to Athens. That move had helped convince Athens to drop its controversial plans for a referendum on new austerity steps, calming financial markets. Schaeuble had personally delivered the news in a phone call to his Greek counterpart Evangelos Venizelos, in hospital at the time with stomach pains.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The euro zone has agreed to take a big leap forward in economic integration, but failed to deliver a convincing answer to investors worried about its ability to tackle threatening debt crises in Italy and Spain.

As a result, the deal clinched by European leaders in the early morning hours of Friday seems unlikely to ease the intense financial pressures that have plagued the currency bloc for over two years. Nor will it dispel concerns that the euro area could eventually break apart, with one or more countries exiting despite the catastrophic consequences that would entail.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The euro zone has agreed to take a big leap forward in economic integration, but failed to deliver a convincing answer to investors worried about its ability to tackle threatening debt crises in Italy and Spain.

As a result, the deal clinched by European leaders in the early morning hours of Friday seems unlikely to ease the intense financial pressures that have plagued the currency bloc for over two years. Nor will it dispel concerns that the euro area could eventually break apart, with one or more countries exiting despite the catastrophic consequences that would entail.

BERLIN, Dec 2 (Reuters) – The euro zone debt crisis
cannot be solved overnight, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said
on Friday, urging instead a long-term approach that relies on
tougher fiscal rules being enshrined in European treaties.

A week before European leaders meet in Brussels for what is
being seen as a make-or-break summit for the 13-year-old single
currency bloc, Merkel once again rejected the idea of joint euro
zone bonds and cautioned against steps that might hurt the
credibility of the European Central Bank.

BERLIN (Reuters) – In the consensus-driven world of German politics it is rare for aspiring leaders to campaign openly for the privilege of leading their party into an election. Candidates are anointed behind closed doors, keeping internal rivalries out of public view.

That is why Peer Steinbrueck’s push to grab the mantle of his party, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), and take on Angela Merkel in the next federal vote in 2013 has stirred up such a peculiar mix of angst and excitement in Berlin.

BERLIN (Reuters) – In the consensus-driven world of German politics it is rare for aspiring leaders to campaign openly for the privilege of leading their party into an election. Candidates are anointed behind closed doors, keeping internal rivalries out of public view.

That is why Peer Steinbrueck’s push to grab the mantle of his party, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), and take on Angela Merkel in the next federal vote in 2013 has stirred up such a peculiar mix of angst and excitement in Berlin.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Calls in Germany for bolder action to stem the euro zone’s debt crisis grew on Thursday after a botched bond auction that some commentators described as a “wake-up call” for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.

German newspapers uniformly interpreted the country’s worst debt sale since the launch of the euro in 1999 as evidence the crisis had finally arrived in the “hard core” of the single-currency bloc.

BERLIN, Nov 23 (Reuters) – A botched sale of German
bonds rang alarm bells in Berlin on Wednesday, with opposition
lawmakers calling it a sign the euro zone’s debt woes were
coming home to roost and slamming Angela Merkel’s government for
failing to spell out the true risks of the crisis to Germans.

Senior members of the chancellor’s Christian Democrats (CDU)
mostly played down the significance of the 10-year bond auction,
in which commercial banks ended up buying just 3.64 billion
euros of the 6 billion euros in bonds Germany had on offer.

BERLIN, Nov 23 (Reuters) – A “disastrous” German bond
sale on Wednesday sparked fears that Europe’s debt crisis was
even beginning to threaten Berlin, with the leaders of the euro
zone’s two strongest economies still firmly at odds over a
longer-term structural solution.

Financial markets were also unnerved by newspaper reports
that Belgium may be pressing France for an expansion of a 90
billion euro ($120 billion) bailout of failed bank Dexia
.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany and France clashed on Wednesday over whether the ECB should take bolder steps to stem the euro zone debt crisis, with Chancellor Angela Merkel issuing one of her starkest warnings yet against fiddling with the central bank’s strict inflation-fighting mandate.

In a forceful speech to the Bundestag lower house of parliament, Merkel also hit back at proposals from the European Commission on joint euro zone bond issuance, calling them “extraordinarily inappropriate.”