Desperate bedfellows: Angela Merkel stumps for Nicolas Sarkozy as Socialists rise in France

[marmar]

from Der Spiegel:



Chancellor Angela Merkel's move to help President Nicolas Sarkozy in his bid for re-election is unprecedented. But so too is the European debt crisis. Berlin is driven by the fear that a Socialist president in Paris may overturn its strategy to rescue the euro. But Merkel's campaign assistance poses risks. By SPIEGEL Staff

It looked almost as if it could have been a wedding when German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy walked into the conference hall of the European Council building in Brussels last Monday. They nodded at each other and exchanged pecks on the cheek, the other heads of state and government moved aside.

The two, of course, were not in Brussels to be betrothed. Rather, they were the main characters at yet another European Union summit. This time, they were seeking support for their fiscal pact, which together they had hammered out in the hopes that it could contribute to saving the EU and its common currency.

Once the pact had received the necessary backing, Merkel was visibly pleased -- and she made no attempt to hide her affinity for Sarkozy. "My political views are well known," she said following the summit. And then came a sentence that had been previously unimaginable for a German chancellor. "Nicolas Sarkozy supported me during my campaign. In the same way, I will now pay back that which he gave me." ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,813583,00.html

[Mass]

1. Sarko is an idiot if he thinks that this will help him.

(Well, he is an idiot.).

[unblock]

2. sidebar, but "betrothed" doesn't belong in the "wedding" theme.

a betrothal is an agreement or contract to marry at some point in the future, and so is more of an engagement rather than something that would happen at a weding. it may or may not be the equivalent of a marriage (in the sense of requiring a divorce to undo), depending on your talmudic/biblical interpretation, but it is certainly not something that would happen at a wedding ceremony.

if it looked as if it could have been a wedding, they would not be going to brussels to be betrothed, even if it WERE for a wedding, because the betrothal would have happened some time prior.