BERLIN, May 7 (UPI) -- The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France has boosted the hopes of European Union experts that the body can move to implement quick and comprehensive reform.
"Europe now has a strong French president capable of acting, and there are good chances that he will get a robust parliamentary majority," Martin Koopmann, France expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International Monday in a telephone interview. "There is the chance that we will have a quick resolution of the problem surrounding the European Union's constitutional treaty."
A conservative and the country's former interior minister, Sarkozy Sunday beat Socialist rival Segolene Royal in the race to succeed outgoing President Jacques Chirac.
The last months in Europe have been dominated by insecurity over who will succeed the French dinosaur and frustration over the final lame-duck period of British Premier Tony Blair, who will hand over the reins to Gordon Brown soon.
That meant German Chancellor Angela Merkel (the only European leader to make Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people), who currently also holds the rotating six-month EU presidency, had to do all the high-profile political work.
Not that this load was too great to shoulder -- her track record has been quite notable, including key finance and climate-change commitments -- but for her favorite project, the revival of the EU constitution, Merkel needs all the help she can get.
Ahead of the upcoming June EU summit, during which Berlin wants to tackle key issues surrounding the constitution, Berlin should try to use the new man in Paris, Koopmann said.
"Germany needs to be a little more offensive toward France because there is a great potential for deeper cooperation without turning the relationship into something exclusive," he told UPI. "Such a deeper cooperation could be beneficial to several issues in the EU framework."
And indeed, Sarkozy seems to be open to EU progress.
In his victory speech Sunday, Sarkozy said, "I want to appeal to our European partners with whom our destiny is closely intertwined that I believe deeply, I believe sincerely, in the construction of Europe. And tonight France is back in Europe."
There is the hope that Sarkozy can take away the traditional French fear of reforms (which are desperately needed in light of the country's ailing economy) and end the French political absence in Europe that began with the country's "No" to the EU constitution some two years ago.
Koopmann added, however, that there still were some issues where France doesn't see eye-to-eye with Germany, citing a possible Turkish EU accession. While Merkel's conservatives favor a privileged partnership rather than full membership for Turkey, her coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats, strongly lobbies for Turkey's EU accession.
If Turkey fulfills the Ankara protocols and improves its human-rights situation, it will be hard for Paris to argue against Turkish membership. Yet France will likely hold public referenda on future EU member states, and in such a case, "Turkey and also the Ukraine don't have good chances," Koopmann said.
He said the dialogue with Washington had clear chances to improve but added that much of Sarkozy's pro-U.S. stances of the past (his support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, for example), were also rooted in a "domestic-policy rupture" with his former mentor Jacques Chirac.
And while Sarkozy was attacked as being Bush's puppet during the feisty French election campaign, his real stance is more like Merkel's: He despises anti-Americanism and favors stronger EU-U.S. ties, yet remains an ardent supporter of multilateralism who is willing to criticize Washington when he feels it is necessary.
