Climate change, immigration

Climate change remains one of the most pressing issues for France during its six-month presidency. France is expected to broker an agreement on mechanisms to curb greenhouse gas emissions and promote green energy resources ahead of a world summit in Copenhagen next year to create a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

But the issue has been tough to tackle as EU members remain heavily disputed over how to measure emissions and share the clean-up burden, despite claims by the EU as a whole that the 27-nation bloc is a "driving force" in the fight against climate change.

France, which has nearly 80 percent of its electricity supplied by nuclear power, has repeatedly clashed with countries led by Germany which has decided to phase out its nuclear power by 2010.

The EU's ambitious goal to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent would be "very difficult to achieve" without nuclear power, argued the French leader.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy plans to present an "immigration pact" in meeting in Cannes next week. The EU leaders are expected to agree to strengthen EU border controls and streamline procedures for repatriating illegal immigrants.

However, the "immigration pact" is not expected to come out very smoothly. The new immigration policies passed by the European Parliament earlier this month has outraged human rights activists and countries with a big emigrant population in the EU, such as Latin America countries.

Leaders of the South American Common Market (Mercosur), which groups Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, have during a recent summit strongly criticized the EU move as a "violation of human rights," and called on the EU to abolish the "biased" rules.

The so-called "return directive", which could come into force in 2010, allows up to 18 months' detention of illegal immigrants before deportation from the EU.