Paris may have handed the EU’s six-monthly chair to Prague yesterday, but President Sarkozy made clear that he intends to keep the job of Europe’s commander-in-chief.

Four hours before ending France’s turn in the EU presidency, Mr Sarkozy announced that he was flying next week to Israel and the West Bank to mediate over the Gaza conflict. He prepared the ground at talks in Paris yesterday with Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister.

In his new year address, Mr Sarkozy made clear that he had no intention of taking a back seat after what he regarded as the most dynamic turn by any leader in the Union’s rotating presidency. In 2008, he boasted, he had not just shaped the destiny of France, but of the whole world.

“The initiatives which I have undertaken in the name of the French presidency of the Union – coordinating the action of all the Europeans and bringing the heads of state of the 20 biggest world powers to Washington – have enabled the world to avoid sliding down the slope of ‘everyone for themselves’, which would have been fatal,” he said. As well as taking credit for organising the emergency summit of the G20 nations in Washington in November, Mr Sarkozy made clear that he intended to impose his views on a “new world order for capitalism” at a G20 meeting in London in March.

Critics regard Mr Sarkozy as being obsessed by the idea that France is too small for a man of his talents. “He has one fear – becoming again the President of an average country, disarmed in the face of recession and confronted by soaring unemployment,”Le Monde newspaper said.

In Mr Sarkozy’s view, the leadership of Europe cannot be left to the Czech Republic, a small, recent member state with a Eurosceptic government. The Union needs a powerful figure from a founder state to steer it through dangerous times, he believes. “Of course I will be taking initiatives,” he told the European Parliament last month after a triumphant review of his handling of the financial turmoil and his peace-brokering in the Caucasus war last summer.

To bolster his push for senior statesmanship, Mr Sarkozy is staging a grand two-day conference next Thursday to draw up plans for “a new world, new capitalism”. Tony Blair, a friend of the right-wing French leader, is to chair the event.

Mr Sarkozy is persisting with a plan to appoint himself leader for at least 12 months of a new governing council of leaders of the single-currency states. Germany has ruled out the idea, but Mr Sarkozy is insisting that the euro needs strong “economic government”.

He says that this will not come in a year when the Union is chaired by the Czechs and Sweden, which are not members of the currency.

According to the weekly newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, Mr Sarkozy has persuaded José Luis RodrÍguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, to co-chair the new group with him.

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