President Nicolas Sarkozy has struck again, forcing the resignation of his
dictator-friendly and gaffe-prone foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, in the hope of shoring up the French government after a terrible couple of weeks. She will be replaced by Defence
Minister Alain Juppé, a heavyweight conservative who was prime minister in the 1990s.
Speaking to the nation on Sunday, Sarkozy suggested re-launching the Mediterranean Union and called for a meeting of the European Council to discuss Europe’s response to the Arab revolutions. Getting European leaders together is a good idea. The scramble by each European country to get their citizens out of Libya could probably have done with a little more coordination. And the EU needs to rethink its billion-euro support for the Arab countries in transition like Tunisia, Egypt and hopefully Libya as well.
But it is hard to see how this will shore up the French president.
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