The plans were grandiose. But now that Ireland has rejected the Lisbon Treaty, Nicolas Sarkozy will have to scale back his goals for the French EU presidency. His answer? Frenetic activity. It was a different looking Eiffel Tower that Parisians saw on Monday night: Lit a deep blue, there was a circle of 12 stars dotting its middle. And on Tuesday, the first day of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's six month stint as holder of the European Union presidency, there is more to come. At 6:30 in the evening, a ceremony will be held at the Arc de Triomphe marking the transfer of the office. Later, Sarkozy will receive President of the European Parliament Hans-Gerd Pöttering (more...) and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Then comes a gala dinner with European Commissioners in the Élysée Palace -- everything as stately as it gets. The Eiffel Tower was lit up on Monday night in honor of France taking over the rotating EU presidency. But it's not just France taking the EU's center stage on Tuesday. It is Sarkozy himself. The French president, with his outsized ego, boorish on-the-job persona and jam-packed agenda, will for the next half year be the political face of Europe's 27-member club. And a first glance, it looks like the hyperactive Sarkozy is not planning to slow down any time soon. Just the first four weeks is full of trips and appearances: A speech before the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 10; the Mediterranean Summit in Paris on July 13 followed by the EU-Africa Summit on the 25th; plus four different European Commission meetings between now and July 25. As if that weren't enough, France is hosting no fewer than eight minister-level mini-summits -- with those responsible for space exploration even flying off to visit the rocket launch pad in Kourou, French Guyana.
The plans were grandiose. But now that Ireland has rejected the Lisbon Treaty, Nicolas Sarkozy will have to scale back his goals for the French EU presidency. His answer? Frenetic activity.
It was a different looking Eiffel Tower that Parisians saw on Monday night: Lit a deep blue, there was a circle of 12 stars dotting its middle. And on Tuesday, the first day of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's six month stint as holder of the European Union presidency, there is more to come. At 6:30 in the evening, a ceremony will be held at the Arc de Triomphe marking the transfer of the office. Later, Sarkozy will receive President of the European Parliament Hans-Gerd Pöttering (more...) and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Then comes a gala dinner with European Commissioners in the Élysée Palace -- everything as stately as it gets.
The Eiffel Tower was lit up on Monday night in honor of France taking over the rotating EU presidency. But it's not just France taking the EU's center stage on Tuesday. It is Sarkozy himself. The French president, with his outsized ego, boorish on-the-job persona and jam-packed agenda, will for the next half year be the political face of Europe's 27-member club.
And a first glance, it looks like the hyperactive Sarkozy is not planning to slow down any time soon. Just the first four weeks is full of trips and appearances: A speech before the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 10; the Mediterranean Summit in Paris on July 13 followed by the EU-Africa Summit on the 25th; plus four different European Commission meetings between now and July 25. As if that weren't enough, France is hosting no fewer than eight minister-level mini-summits -- with those responsible for space exploration even flying off to visit the rocket launch pad in Kourou, French Guyana.
You'd think by now it's only meant to impress them and no one else?
Sheesh In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Marrying Bruni seems to have been his biggest policy success.
It is not driven or purposeful, it is not concentrated, it is not targeted, it is not managed or thought-out, or even useful. It's just moving randomly and bursting in anger every now and again. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
