It is hard to think of what more Angela Merkel could have done over the past weeks to nudge fellow European leaders toward a post-Brexit consensus.
In the run-up to Friday's EU-27 summit (the bloc minus Britain) in Bratislava, the German chancellor met personally with 24 of her 26 counterparts.
She traveled to Warsaw, to Tallinn, to Prague, to Paris and to the Italian island of Ventotene. In the end, all the careful consulting, the earnest effort to show everyone that Germany is not setting the agenda on its own, came to nothing.