Reliving the euro’s most crucial moments with Peter Spiegel

By Eleni Varvitsioti

BRUSSELS – We met at a restaurant near the Schuman roundabout in central Brussels. Peter Spiegel was already at the table, answering an e-mail on his cell phone, with the European Council building visible in the background. “You can't imagine what's going on in Greece with your reports,” I tell him. “I can't believe it either,” said the author of three recent articles in the Financial Times titled “How the euro was saved” that have sent shock waves through Greece. “When I was writing them I thought they would be more important for Germany than for Greece,” he added.

The chief of the FT bureau in Brussels published the expose in a series of articles earlier this month. It sparked a range of reactions from within the inner circles of Greek politics as he revealed in great detail the events that unfolded on the sidelines of the G20 summit at Cannes in November 2011, when former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou discussed with eurozone leaders his intention to hold a referendum on whether Athens should accept the second bailout deal it agreed with the troika. He also revealed how eurozone officials had been working on a secret “Plan Z” in the event that Greece left the single currency.

For Spiegel, the moment signaling a more systematic effort to deal with the crisis was German Chancellor Angela Merkel's trip to Athens in October 2012. “The importance of that visit has not been appreciated as much as it ought to have in my opinion,” said Spiegel. “That was when the German chancellor decided that Greece would not leave the euro, despite [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schaeuble pushing her.”

For the American journalist, it became imperative to write about the...