The Inside Story of How Europe Landed Its Massive Stimulus Plan
- Rutte clashed with colleagues through four days of talks
- Merkel, Macron at heart of negotiations on plan they devised
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On Friday morning Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron were sipping mineral water on a sunlit terrace overlooking Brussels as negotiations began on a 750 billion-euro ($860 billion) European stimulus package they’d sketched out two months earlier.
By the early hours of Monday, the leaders of Germany and France were refueling on potato chips and wine as they battled to hold the talks together.