During France's six-months presidency of the EU, Nicolas Sarkozy won widespread praise for his high-octane leadership. Just a few weeks after handing over the reins of power, though, some eurocrats are wondering aloud whether he is now destroying one of the EU's most important achievements: the single market. With economic growth in France stalling and unemployment rising, Sarkozy is under pressure to show voters he is acting to stave off a depression. Whereas last year he could always convene an EU summit, Sarko is now restricted to domestic initiatives like his controversial €6bn plan to bail out the French car industry. Even before its details had been made public, though, the French president sparked a fierce dispute over protectionism by criticising the manufacturers who relocated abroad only to re-export their cars to France. "If we give the car industry money to restructure," Sarkozy told French television viewers, "it is not to find out a new factory is being moved to the Czech Republic or elsewhere."
Sarko's comments shattered the veneer of EU unity in reaction to the economic crisis—and provoked a furious response from Mirek Topolánek, prime minister of the Czech Republic, which now holds the EU presidency. One senior Polish politician warned that Sarko had reopened the divisions between "old" and "new" Europe that his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, created. But the reaction of the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, underlined the real risks of the Sarkozy stance. If French car-makers decided to quit Slovakia, Fico said, he'd send Gaz de France home. The row illustrates the growing fragility of the single market in the face of recession. Consumers may take its advantages for granted, but the downturn is prompting a significant rethink of European economic integration. The financial sector was the first to experience this when the Benelux banking group Fortis got into trouble last year. Spurning a cross-border rescue with the Belgians, the Dutch government decided to nationalise its Netherlands operations, so that Fortis has effectively been dismembered. If this is the reaction of governments in Holland and Belgium, two founder members of the EU and arch-supporters of European integration, the single market could be in for quite a battering.
Europe's centre of gravity shifts east
You can tell things are bad for Sarko because José Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, seems rather less keen to be his friend. Barroso spent most of last year toadying shamelessly to Sarko for fear that the Elysée would veto his second term in the Berlaymont building. But Barroso's one great skill is his unerring ability to calculate the centre of gravity among EU leaders—or at least the important ones—and that has swung away from Sarkozy. The French president's relations with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, have always been frosty. But Sarko has now upset Gordon Brown by suggesting that his VAT cut has "made absolutely no difference." The Czech presidency of the EU, meanwhile, feels undermined and briefed against by the Elysée whose officials have contrasted the dynamism of the French presidency with the lethargy of its successor. So Prague has made a point of working closely with Berlin on the "my enemy's enemy is my friend" principle. And the Czechs are getting much more sympathy from eastern Europe following Sarko's comments on the car industry. When Sarko suggested an emergency EU economic summit, then, he was destined not to get his way. His plan was for a gathering of eurozone leaders, one that would almost certainly have been chaired by him (since the Czechs are not in the euro). But Merkel killed the idea, insisting that the meeting should be for all 27 EU countries (and therefore chaired by the Czechs). Then Barroso and Topolánek agreed to rush out an announcement convening the meeting, leaving Sarko without even the credit for yet another summit.
A pretty picture in the middle east
When the history of the middle east peace process is written, it's a fair bet that the name Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European external relations commissioner, will not feature prominently. Yet when leaders gathered in Sharm el Sheikh in January to agree a ceasefire for Gaza, there she was, smiling out from the photos of assembled VIPs. It turns out that getting into the picture required fast footwork. As soon as the ceasefire breakthrough became known, Ferrero-Waldner was put on an Egypt-bound plane by her officials. Only when she was airborne (at considerable expense to the European taxpayer) did the commissioner stop to ask if she had actually been invited. She hadn't, of course. But—presented with a fait accompli and a potential diplomatic incident—Egyptian officials reluctantly agreed to let her attend the ceremony. In addition to rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers there was an added bonus: her arch-rival, the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, was nowhere to be seen. Solana, who has spent much of the last decade criss-crossing the middle east with little to show for his efforts, did ask whether he was invited before getting on a plane. When he found out that he wasn't, Solana did an odd thing for a veteran of EU politics: he decided his dignity was worth more than a photo-opportunity and stayed at home.
