‘Europe will miss her’

European leaders heaped praise on German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday as she attended what is likely her last EU summit after a 16-year reign heavily influencing the bloc through major ups and downs. 

Merkel has attended a staggering 107 EU summits that saw some of the biggest twists in recent European history, including the eurozone debt crisis, an inflow of Syrian refugees, Brexit and the creation of the bloc's landmark pandemic recovery fund.

"She is someone who for 16 years has really left her mark on Europe, helping all 27 of us to take the right decisions with a lot of humanity at times that were difficult," said Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre De Croo.

Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel called Merkel a "compromise machine" who "usually did find something to unite us" through several marathon intra-EU negotiations.

"Europe will miss her," he said.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said he hoped Merkel, a "great politician", would remain on the political scene "in one form or another".

Her final summit, a two-day affair in Brussels, leaned once again on her soft-power skills to ease a burning row with Poland over its rejection of the EU's legal order -- something many believed could be the next existential threat to the European Union.

East-west feuding has been a recurrent theme in Merkel's long tenure.

Her mediating role reflected both the status of Germany as the EU's economic powerhouse with sway over many of the former Soviet-bloc countries that later joined the Union, which tilted the political balance away from Paris and towards Berlin.

Germany is still in the process of putting together a government to replace Merkel's, following September elections she did not contest that saw her conservative CDU party handed a drubbing.

In Brussels, her legacy will still to glimpsed in the person of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, formerly Merkel's defence minister who was nominated to her position in no small part thanks to the outgoing German leader.