Direction: Europe

Europe is next in Nicolas Sarkozy’s arena of ambitions-not like Napoleon, with whom he is often compared, but in the noble concept of the European Union. Beginning in July France will take its six-month turn filling the presidency of the 27-member Union, which is not really about being president but simply first among equals.

As he warms to the task Sarkozy is basking in two international successes after his long and deepening chill with the French electorate. First was a preliminary accord with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on his Mediterranean initiative.

But the far more dazzling success was a state visit to London, a triumphal debut for the new Première Dame, née Carla Bruni-Tedeschi. Demure in Dior, Carla was queen for a couple of days in the Windsor royal precincts (and on the cover of Paris Match), pushing even the British press from mocking to maudlin. The gushy admiration for the “effortlessly beautiful” Carla was enough to suck the breath out of anyone accustomed to the London tabloids’ snarky attention to France.

More soberly, the Financial Times adjudged the Sarkozy visit “a resounding diplomatic success,” ending as it did with a stack of agreements and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s one-upping Sarkozy’s “entente amicale” by pronouncing instead an “entente formidable” between partners who are better known for sparring than for cordiality. Clearly not sparring now, Brown and Sarkozy declared a “partnership of pioneers” that will take on global warming and other less daunting concerns.

Successful pageantry, successful diplomacy and success in the back stories all marked the London visit. Angela Merkel cannot have missed the signals that France will look west across the Channel as well as east across the Rhine for a close ally in guiding Europe’s future. The other noteworthy signals were Gordon Brown’s to Washington that more than one relationship can be special. Following America into the Iraq quagmire has cost the British government enormously in public opinion as well as in soldiers’ lives and pounds sterling.

Looking toward his responsibilities as first among European equals, Sarkozy has compiled a short list of priorities, and the progress with Merkel and Brown aligned Europe’s big players on at least three of them: climate change, illegal immigration and a unified defense structure.

The defense agreement with London represents a significant step forward on a long-time French priority that has run into problems with the UK in the past. Taking Washington’s side, London has long argued that the kind of European Defense Command that Paris has pushed for would work to the detriment of NATO, the venerable alliance that has kept the peace in Europe for 60 years.

Brown has moved beyond that position, and indeed President George W. Bush also has endorsed the French idea. Perhaps it’s an idea whose time has come, and perhaps it’s just a tradeoff-the French are sending another battalion to Afghanistan to reinforce NATO’s vital efforts there to stop a resurgent Taliban. And France has committed to a complete return to NATO, a major step-Charles de Gaulle’s withdrawal from NATO in 1966 was one of the touchstones of fifty years of French skepticism on American postwar policy.

In the agreements with Brown and Merkel, Sarkozy has set a good foundation for his four EU priorities. The first, global warming, is a sweaty thought in the front of most brains these days. The second, immigration, isn’t far behind as the financial and social costs mount across Western Europe. At its core No. 3, defense, goes to the ultimate seriousness of the EU’s purpose. If Europe is not willing to come out from under the American military umbrella, does Europe even need that central phone number that Henry Kissinger once asked for, rhetorically and derisively?

Concerns about immigration-and terrorism, and Turkey’s efforts to join the European fold-underlie Sarkozy’s call for a Mediterranean union. Merkel signed on after Sarkozy ratcheted back the scope of his idea-now a big economic zone and no longer a substitute second union to keep Turkey out of the big one. Sarkozy also agreed to open membership to all 27 EU members as well as countries in North Africa and the Middle East that border the Mediterranean. The plan is to be launched officially at the EU’s Paris summit, which will coincide with Bastille Day.

What Merkel called “the good work” that she and Sarkozy accomplished on the plan has quieted some of the buzz at European headquarters about their bad chemistry. Their prickly relationship is a problem for the Franco-German partnership that historically has been at the crux of European cooperation.

And then there’s the fourth of Sarkozy’s priorities, agricultural policy. All politics is local, and while the noble concept of European unity may be supra-national, the clamor to reapportion subsidies pushes high-mindedness off the table. Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a big ticket and France gets the lion’s share, some €10 billion annually. Obviously, the idea behind calls for reform is not to dole out even more subsidies to French farmers.

The last reforms, in 2003, pushed Europe’s farmers away from heavy subsidies and toward market-driven production. The changes shrank agriculture’s share of the EU’s €1.2 billion budget (2007 figures) to “only” 40 percent, down from 60 percent. (The budget is approximately 1 percent of the gross domestic product of all EU members.)

So now CAP means not just its usual yawn, but a double pressure point for Sarkozy, from his own farmers, who want to keep their subsidies, and from his European counterparts who want to see the money shifted to benefit their countries or new Eastern European members which need help to shed the economic shackles of their Communist past and seize the opportunities that EU membership is supposed to offer.

Subsidies for farmers in wealthy countries work to the disadvantage of Third World farmers as they try to sell into global markets. France pays a lot of attention to that kind of concern, prideful of its role as humanitarian beacon and enforcer of the rights of man-although the attention is often more lip service than bonne action.

But action takes money, and Sarkozy has pointed out that France’s coffers are empty. So it’s not likely that his need to set an example during the six-month French presidency will temper his need to hold onto votes at home and the subsidies that buy them.

He is proposing, however, to shift subsidies away from agro conglomerates that are now rolling in dough, thanks to rising grain prices, and direct them instead at small farmers whose profits are in decline.

Europe’s national leaders look to international opportunities when they are weak at home, and most of them are. Sarkozy’s approval rating is less than 50 percent. Embarrassing missteps have marked Gordon Brown’s first months as prime minister. Angela Merkel’s broad compromise coalition is increasingly fragile; Silvio Berlusconi, elected in mid-April to his third stint as Italy’s prime minister, is taking over a bankrupt government with a fractious coalition; and Belgium’s intractable language wars prevented the formation of a government for months. Even in the doleful context of the international credit crisis and the inflation that’s galloping into Europe on the back of the anemic dollar, the challenges offered by Brussels are perhaps very attractive these days, compared to the pitfalls on the home front.