Sarkozy, who was elected two years after French voters gave a resounding referendum "No" to the EU's draft new constitution, has now emerged as the most Europe-minded of the EU leaders. He is also by far the most energetic and has made himself into Europe's dominant figure, ahead of Britain's lugubrious Gordon Brown and Germany's cautious Angela Merkel.

After brokering the shaky peace deal and ceasefire between Russia and Georgia, Sarkozy is remaking policy around the world, not least in the Middle East. Indeed, immediately after the Monday summit, he flies to Damascus for talks intended to lure Syrian President Bashar Assad out of the diplomatic cold.

Sarkozy told the annual conference of France's ambassadors this week in Paris that he had decided to try "another route, more risky it is true, but more promising -- open dialogue leading to tangible progress."

France froze ties with Syria after the 2005 murder of Lebanon's ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, and the United States still shuns Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism. But Sarkozy sees Syria as key not just to Arab-Israeli relations but also to his own plans for a Mediterranean Union, to bring the countries of the Maghreb and Levant into much closer relations with the EU.

Sarkozy's Syrian plan came on the heels of his meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah in Paris Wednesday, when France and Jordan signed a new accord on civilian nuclear cooperation. It includes a deal by France's Areva group to mine uranium in Jordan and the prospect of France building nuclear power plants in the desert kingdom.

At the same time, Sarkozy is defying French opinion polls that say most of his voters want France's 2,600 troops brought home from Afghanistan, where 10 were killed Aug.18 on a poorly-planned patrol near Kabul. Sarkozy insists the troops stay because the war is a struggle against terrorism, the struggle for our values, for freedom and human rights in a country martyred by obscurantist barbarity.

Despite this, Sarkozy's personal poll ratings have just reached a 12-month high, despite grim economic tidings. The French like to see their president count for something on the world stage, and Sarkozy is visibly enjoying his current six-month stint in the rotating EU presidency.

But the real test will come Monday, when he seeks to reconcile the anti-Russian suspicions of the former Warsaw Pact nations with those EU countries uncomfortably aware of their dependence on Russian energy supplies. If Sarkozy can achieve that while persuading the Kremlin to abide by the peace deal he crafted, then perhaps the EU can start to be a major diplomatic force in the future.