Once hailed as a fresh face who was elected with a mandate to change France, he is behaving, to some, as if he had a mandate to lead all of Europe. What’s more, while Sarkozy has equivocated between state power and market solutions at home, on the European stage his statist side has come to the fore. He has lectured a European summit on the upside of trade protection, pushed for an enduring French role in the European consortium that owns Airbus and pressed eurozone ministers to grant France more time to cut deficit spending. Perhaps most surprisingly, his government proposed greater political control over the independent European Central Bank, and then suggested the euro group serve as a counterbalance to the bank, threatening a cornerstone of freedom and efficiency in the European common market.
In polite conversation, continental leaders say they’re reserving judgment on the newbie president. But Sarkozy’s early moves have also won him appellations like “an irritation,” a “grandstander” and “a little Napoleon.” In part, the European frustration with Sarkozy is a matter of contrasting styles. To many, his international forays reek of showmanship. The ambiguous role of his glamorous wife, Cécilia, in rescuing the hostages rankled his European allies, who had spent years negotiating their release. They were infuriated as well by the subsequent news that he’d struck a deal to sell Tripoli weapons and a nuclear power plant. “With the Libyan deal, he has shown himself to be an arch-opportunist,” says Hugo Brady, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
More than that, the young (52-year-old) president is worlds apart from his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, an old hand at European-style consensus-building. Sarkozy has little time or patience for such diplomatic niceties, says Patrick Weil, a political scientist at the University of Paris 1-Sorbonne. By contrast, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, prefers to share the limelight and build consensus. “She likes to take the best from each argument and say the sum is better than its parts,” says Jackson Janes, director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. “Sarkozy doesn’t see disagreements in the same vein. He sees them more as zero sum.”
Sarkozy has also raised eyebrows on matters of substance. Soon after he became France’s new president, for example, he unexpectedly announced that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an economist and a heavyweight from the Socialist Party he’d just defeated, would be the French nominee to head the IMF. While the nomination was a savvy political move at home (it neutered a political opponent), it was unwelcome news to nations like Poland and Italy, which had their own candidates for the job. A campaign suggestion that the European Central Bank should go beyond its mandate to manage inflation and focus additionally on growth and job creation implied French willingness to meddle with a key component of financial-market stability. The move earned Sarkozy withering rebukes: “I don’t think that the ECB can be taken, or should be taken, on a leash,” sniffed Peer Steinbrück, the German Finance minister.
Yet once in office he continued to suggest ways of curbing the ECB’s authority. Later, Sarkozy sent the G7 leaders a condescending letter instructing them to pay close attention to the credit crunch in the United States—as if it wouldn’t have occurred to them to do so. And Sarkozy told a meeting of eurozone Finance ministers that France may need an extension until 2012—two years beyond the deadline Chirac had accepted—to balance the nation’s budget, arguing he wanted time for his reforms to take effect.
So far, Sarkozy has seemed more interested in disciplining the markets than accepting market discipline. In June, he told a European summit that “the word ‘protection’ is no longer taboo.” “He’s basically a liberal with inclinations to interfere,” says Holger Schmieding, head of European economics at the Bank of America in London. Yet there is still enormous anticipation in Europe for what Sarkozy can do. Kouchner’s travels in Iraq last week are the clearest signal yet that France won’t be shy about breaking with Chirac’s legacy. Charles A. Kupchan, a Europe expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, says despite the carping, Europeans welcome the prospect of a functioning France. “From the rejection of the European constitution through the end of the Chirac presidency, the French government was effectively in suspension,” he says. “Now you’ve got a very popular president with a strong mandate and a robust domestic and international agenda. That has contributed to the sense that Europe has wind in its sails.”
Back home, Sarkozy’s showboating has won him immense popularity. French voters love his ability to disarm his enemies, often by putting them into positions of authority. (Kouchner, like Strauss-Kahn, is a Socialist.) The public also likes his willingness to protect French jobs and play the role of international hero. His approval rating is 65 percent. By pushing statist answers for Europe, he can credibly claim to be a champion of the French economy. So when the time comes to make hard changes, he will be viewed as a reluctant reformer, not a laissez-faire ideologue. Surely the point isn’t lost on Sarkozy: the actions now vexing his allies will allow him to deliver the change they are so anxious to see.
With Tracy McNicoll in Paris and Nick Hayes in London
