EUROPEAN DIARY:The French president's adaptability and work rate were key to his successful tenure, writes Jamie Smyth
FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy's whirlwind six-month tenure as EU president is coming to an end, leaving diplomats and journalists in dire need of a holiday.
The energetic Sarkozy hasn't stopped working since France took over the EU presidency in July. The calendar of events was already looking busy by July, and that was before war broke out in Georgia and the worst financial crisis in 60 years descended upon the European and global economy.
At the end of his press conference at last week's EU summit, Sarkozy bragged about arranging three times more EU leaders' summits than normal.
"Europe has to be much more responsive and stop getting bogged down in procedures. Look how much you can get done in six months," he said after cobbling together complex deals on the Lisbon Treaty, climate change and a financial stimulus package before 2pm on Friday.
"The main ingredient of president Sarkozy's and France's successful semester has been a unique combination of political energy - the French call it volontarisme - and policy pragmatism," says Antonio Missiroli, director of the European Policy Centre, who adds that Sarkozy displayed a remarkable - and almost un-French - degree of open-mindedness and adaptability in terms of reaction to unexpected events and developments.
I have to admit to being a Sarkozy-sceptic before his EU presidency began. Behind his grandiose rhetoric about "moving Europe forward", I suspected he would pursue a purely French agenda, aping the last French presidency of the EU in 2000 under Jacques Chirac.
His aggressive promotion of a Mediterranean Union, which in its original form created huge tensions within the EU, and his regular attacks on the independence of the European Central Bank, didn't augur well.
But since taking over, he has embraced compromise in these important areas, enabling the Mediterranean Union to become a reality and in the process even drawing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad out of international isolation.
There is also little doubt that Sarkozy was the right man to tackle the Georgian crisis, which erupted unexpectedly during the summer. With a lame duck president in the White House, it was Sarkozy who flew to Moscow to meet Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to negotiate a ceasefire between Russian and Georgian forces.
The deal has been criticised for being too lenient towards Moscow, but with Russian tanks just a few miles from Tbilisi, Sarkozy's action may have prevented a long occupation of Georgia.
Barely a month later, US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, sparking a global credit crunch that threatened to topple the world's banking sector. Once again Sarkozy responded, calling two summits within eight days to co-ordinate an EU response together with British prime minister Gordon Brown.
"Sarkozy brought extraordinary energy to the presidency when the economic and political turmoil of the last few months meant Europe was crying out for leadership," says Hugo Brady, analyst with the Centre for European Reform think tank, adding that Sarkozy's leadership was an "invaluable contribution to global stability".
There have been moments when the French president's enthusiasm for the job clouded his political judgment, most notably an ill-conceived plan to create a new president of the euro zone (a job he apparently wants himself). He also offended Czech sensibilities when he declared at an EU-Russia summit in November that its plans to host a US missile defence system should be put on ice for several months. The missile defence proposal is a bilateral issue between the US and the Czech Republic and nothing to do with the EU, countered Czech deputy prime minister Alexander Vondra, who noted sarcastically at last week's European summit that Sarkozy had run "a fairly imperial EU presidency".
But when compromises were needed to get things done, Sarkozy - who was helped enormously by his experienced European affairs minister, Jean-Pierre Jouyet - obliged.
The climate package is a case in point. Environmentalists may crib that the final deal gives too many concessions to Europe's heavy industry.
However, simply retaining the 20 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020 is a success given the economic downturn.
Saying no to the persuasive Sarkozy is not easy. Taoiseach Brian Cowen tried it on Thursday, declaring that a particular issue was non-negotiable for him. He was told in no uncertain terms by the French president that that was not how it worked under his presidency of the EU. The next day Cowen had signed up to a second referendum by November.
When Sarkozy wanted one of his ministers to sit in with EU leaders to discuss an issue, he was told by officials that there was no extra chair and not enough space.
So he went and got the chair himself, telling journalists that bureaucrats "could take hours arguing about the number of chairs in a room".
"We need to inject some life and flexibility into Europe," said Sarkozy, who like a movie star hasn't stopped smiling for the cameras in the past six months.
"Am I going to miss it all? Well, maybe," he grinned.
I've a sneaking suspicion the European press corps will miss him too.