Nicolas Sarkozy and the Eurozone crisis: federalisation of the EU budget and finance sector

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The article explores President of France N. Sarkozy’s contribution to overcoming the eurozone crisis in 2010 by analyzing the strategy of his diplomatic actions, as well as identifying the goals and motivations underlying them. The rescue of the European currency required a close coordination between Paris and Berlin. Despite differing views on the practical modalities related to the implementation of the European Economic Government project, the Franco-German tandem managed to convince the EU partners to take immediate action aimed at improving public financial management practices. Under the pretext of saving Greece from default, the euro zone from disintegration, and the European Union from economic destabilisation, the President of France, with the support of the German Chancellor, achieved the creation of the European Stabilization Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Fund, which were the first autonomous financial structures in the European Union to be managed directly by the bureaucracy in Brussels. Nicolas Sarkozy initiated the EU financial stability collective tools, which are still operating in the EU and functioning in accordance with the logic proposed by France in the midst of the eurozone public debt crisis.