Poor Alistair Darling. Just as the new chancellor of the exchequer was briefing the Brussels press corps on how Europeans hadn't agreed on a candidate to head the IMF, several mobile phones in the room started to beep. To Darling's embarrassment, the Portuguese EU presidency had announced by text message an EU agreement to back France's candidate for the IMF post, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The episode marked another triumph in an impressive honeymoon for the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has not only outmanoeuvred Britain over the IMF but eclipsed Angela Merkel as the driving force in the EU. Under Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, France's political elite was submerged in an interminable existential crisis over the decline of French international influence (not to mention the demise of la langue de Molière). Now the French are on the verge of holding the top posts in no less than four international institutions (the IMF, the European Central Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Trade Organisation). Sarko had already emerged as the saviour of the Brussels EU summit—called to agree a constitutional treaty—where he helped clinch a deal on the treaty while winning key concessions on economic policy to sell to his domestic audience. Such is his Midas touch that Sarkozy is now being pressed to take a role in managing the EU's foreign policy problems, such as Kosovo. So how has Sarko emerged triumphant on a European stage while Gordon Brown has yet to make any impact at all? The answer is that the French president, unlike the British premier, has been preparing a European strategy for some time. Early in 2006, the man who was to become his prime minister, François Fillon, gave the first hint of how Sarko intended to extricate himself from the crisis created by France's referendum "no" to the European constitution. The answer was not to duck the tricky EU issue, but to make Sarko's position on the constitution very clear in the French presidential election campaign, and to use it as a mandate to avoid the need to hold a second, risky plebiscite on whatever was agreed to replace the constitution. Last September, Sarkozy duly expanded on his plans with a speech at the Bibliothèque Solvay in Brussels, throwing his weight behind the idea of a mini-treaty. Once elected, Sarko also took some risks, putting his own credibility on the line by fighting hard for an agreement during the June summit. The French president schmoozed the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, even offering to fly to Warsaw to address the Polish parliament on the merits of the agreement. Brown, meanwhile, has favoured a traditional British approach of saying as little as possible about the EU for fear of upsetting the tabloid press. As prime minister, Brown will be no pushover in negotiations, but his strategy seems to be purely defensive, and little match for a French president who knows what he wants—and seems to be getting it.
Less of a commissioner
Such is the city's reputation for culinary excellence that some journalists refer to the duration of their postings in Brussels not in years, but in kilos. However, the man who was once the living, breathing symbol of all that was good but health-threatening about Belgian cuisine has turned his back on the good life. Belgium's European commissioner, Louis Michel, has been a familiar rotund figure on the international stage since his days as Belgian foreign minister. But after some stern advice from his doctor, Michel is now turning down all but absolutely unavoidable official dinners. As part of his regime, l'heure de table is spent at the desk rather than in a nearby restaurant. The result has been dramatic. Michel, who once weighed in at no less than 130 kilos, has shed 43 of them, rendering him almost unrecognisable.
A visa for Mugabe
Even though it won't happen for months, the Portuguese are in a terrible pickle over what to do about Zimbabwe and the forthcoming EU-Africa summit in Lisbon. Such international gatherings are high-risk, as the Spanish discovered in 2005 when they chaired a heads of government meeting to mark the anniversary of the "Barcelona process"—a Euro-Mediterranean partnership—only to find that almost none of the senior middle eastern leaders could be bothered to turn up. This time the problem is slightly different: if the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe attends, then the British premier—and probably several others—will stay away. But it seems that the summit will go ahead and that Mugabe will be invited (and granted a visa in defiance of EU "smart sanctions" against him). The Portuguese are hoping, of course, that the South Africans will persuade Mugabe to stay away, but if not they have a fallback position: any meetings Mugabe attends will be accompanied by a lecture on human rights. But why is Portugal so determined to go ahead with what would be, after all, only the second EU-Africa summit? What really seems to worry the Portuguese is the fact that failing to cultivate Africa leaves the field open for the Chinese.
