Greece and Europe locked in epic endurance test

Even by the high standards of the last five years, this is an epic endurance test. A week after the Greek people voted to reject the terms of a second bailout programme, Greek officials spent a bleak weekend locked up in Brussels backrooms negotiating the third.

This even tougher programme, to guarantee up to €86 billion in loans, was a slow, humiliating retreat, a multi-billion game of European poker with a worldwide audience. The audience onsite in Brussels comprised 16 benches of journalists drawn from Dublin to Dubai, typing and tweeting every crumb of intelligence from the vast European Council press room.

After two tense eurogroup sessions on Saturday and Sunday totalling 13 hours, finance ministers put together a four-page draft paper listing in detail all the reforms, right down to liberalisation of the bakery sector, European creditors wanted to see before even talks could begin about a third Greek bailout. Ministers handed over their draft on Sunday afternoon to euro leaders.

Heading in just after 3pm for a 4pm start, Angela Merkel warned that "hard talks" lay ahead. The German leader wasn't exaggerating. At 1am, European commission officials made a final circuit of the press room with their prediction that it would be a long night. Their verdict before stalking out: "The mood is shitty." At 6am Irish time, after 15 hours of talks, leaders were still talking.

These were talks about talks, in peace process parlance, an attempt to nail down the political and legal terms under which talks for a third bailout could take place. Mr Tsipras and his team worked through the list of measures they would have to get past the Greek parliament, trying to soften the worst of the blows.

But as Greek ATMs continue to drain of cash, fresh money is still some way off as the real negotiating work lies ahead. Though 19 leaders were in the room, this was a face-off between Alexis Tsipras and Angela Merkel, the Greek student protestor turned Marxist prime minister versus the East German pastor's daughter and former "agitation and propaganda officer" in the socialist scouts. Nothing happened for a long time, then nothing started happening even slower.

As the clock plodded on, and the fabled Asian markets opened without any turbulence, the first Asian television journalists began reporting on the nothing-to-report summit while the first European journalists were having Asian-style powernaps under their desks. The long, newsless night passed in a haze of bilaterals, trilaterals, quadralaterals and coffee. Drafts were drawn up, torn up, drawn up again. At 3am the night was at its darkest - and, by all reports, the talks too.

By 4am as the sky lightened two major obstacles remained (three if you include from staying awake): the involvement (or not) of the IMF in future Greek bailouts and the value of assets to be transferred out of Greece as a condition of the package. The Greeks are anxious to be rid of the IMF while many Europeans, lead by Germany, are not. But the IMF cannot lend any more money to Greece until it clears its outstanding loans of €1.5 billion.

On the assets transfer, Greece's EU partners want €50 billion of assets shifted to a Luxembourg-based trustee fund for privatisation to pay down debt. When Athens insisted on €17 billion, a Greek official said its creditors demanded its banks be recapitalised and transferred to the trustee fund too. At 5am, custom in the (now all-night) coffee shop picked up considerably as food supplies began to run low. Diana Ross sang "Chain Reaction" on the radio, praising the benefits of "the after midnight action". "You gotta plan your future is on the run," she warbled, but Alexis Tsipras couldn't hear her seven floors up as he haggled the last points of the deal he said he would never do. As 6am passed, and Europe began to wake up, word filtered out that Mr Tsipras was looking desperately for something he could sell as a victory back home - like the departure of the IMF. As Europe put on the coffee and checked Twitter, #thisisacoup was one of the world's top trending terms, being pushed by US economist Paul Krugman and others; #thisisincitement was not faring as well.

Even as talks reached their final round today the marathon is not over for Alexis Tsipras. The original in 490 BC arose from a Greek triumph, when soldier Pheidippides carried news of a Greek victory over the Persians to Athens.

This modern Brussels marathon was nearing defeat for the Greeks. Mr Tsipras has a bitter message to bring back home, and may soon no longer have a government to deliver results back to Brussels . After a long, dark night, his defeat may yet be Europe’s.