EU summit gives Merkel big sendoff even if she might return

Angela Merkel is still German Chancellor and might be still when the EU leaders meet again, yet they gave her a farewell party at Friday’s EU summit

BRUSSELS -- Angela Merkel is still German Chancellor and might be still when EU leaders meet again, yet they gave her a farewell party at Friday's EU summit.

Attending her 107th summit, she was feted by friend and foe alike in an informal ceremony behind closed doors early Friday, where they called her anything from a “compromise machine” to the EU's Eiffel Tower.

Merkel has been the embodiment of the drive for a stronger united Europe for years since she attended her first meeting of EU leaders 16 years ago, at a time when Jacques Chirac was still French president and Tony Blair British prime minister.

“You are a monument,” said EU Council President Charles Michel, adding that a summit meeting without her will be like “Rome without the Vatican or Paris without the Eiffel Tower.”