Sarkozy weighs US and Europe - by J ohn Thornhill
Mr Sarkozy has made it clear that France's top foreign policy priority remains Europe. There has long been a strand of thought in French policy circles that "to be more European tomorrow it is necessary to be more Atlanticist today". Indeed, Mr Sarkozy seems determined to establish the European Union as a global power, thereby creating the multi-polar world that his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, only dreamed about. Mr Sarkozy has promised to devote his energies to building a more muscular European security policy when France holds the EU's rotating presidency in the second half of 2008. Yet it is in Europe that the biggest doubts creep in about the coherence of Mr Sarkozy's vision. The French president aspires to lead Europe. But he is doing a pretty good job of antagonising some of France's most loyal friends. His grandstanding over the release of the imprisoned Bulgarian nurses in Libya, his constant criticisms of the European Central Bank and his hawkish stance on Iran have antagonised Berlin. His confrontational personality has also annoyed fellow Europeans accustomed to a more consensual, communautaire way of doing things. As Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a European parliamentarian, recently told French radio: "The Sarkozy style is very French, very king of France, emperor of France. It is I who does everything, it is I who thinks everything, who is everything. It is me, me, me at the European level and that irritates people because it's not true."
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