A glimpse of EU government

When president Sarkozy said, before the European Parliament on 16 December 2008, that the French presidency had allowed the European institutions to function at full capacity and successfully, he corrected a widely held image. The image, proffered in the media and in even better informed circles, was that he, Nicolas Sarkozy, happening into a repetition of crises which plunged him into his element, had personally gone around to solve one crisis after the other. According to Sarkozy himself, that was not the case. It was the European states, the Brussels institutions and the Parliament that had for once taken their responsibility and had acted.