ANGELA MERKEL’S first EU summit, in December 2005, was a sign of things to come. Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac were locked in combat over the seven-year budget. The chancellor, in office for three weeks, took stock of others’ red lines, schooled Mr Blair and Mr Chirac in the finer details and, after negotiating for hours (and oiling the wheels with German money), brokered a compromise. If the rest of Europe is nervous over Mrs Merkel’s departure, it is because she has made herself the indispensable European: brilliantly briefed, invested in personal relationships, and possessing almost superhuman negotiating stamina.