How the Euro Was Saved

Schauble and Merkel

A hard default

With most of Europe’s attention focused on France, where Mr Sarkozy was fighting an unsuccessful effort to win re-election on the same day as Greece’s first parliamentary election, few outside Greece anticipated the storm that was approaching. Even within Greece many political leaders were stunned when results started rolling in on the evening of Sunday May 6.

For most of the four decades since its return to democracy in 1974, Greece’s electoral politics had been dominated by two parties, Pasok on the left and New Democracy on the right. But as the crisis deepened, amid accusations by bailout monitors of mismanagement ...