Keen anticipation and a certain foreboding are greeting France’s six-month presidency of the European Union, which starts Tuesday. This is Nicolas Sarkozy’s moment, the hot seat he has been eager to occupy since he won the French presidential election in May 2007. It is his chance to erase once and for all the embarrassment of French voters’ rejection of the EU constitutional treaty in 2005. He will try to persuade Europeans that a fresh, creative spirit in France has replaced the introversion of Jacques Chirac’s final years in power.

But the ground has shifted since June 12, when Ireland voted No in a referendum on the EU’s Lisbon treaty, successor to the old constitutional treaty. The long list of ambitious tasks that France had set for itself, in immigration, energy, climate change, defence, agriculture, social policy, relations with the EU’s Mediterranean neighbours, relations with Ukraine and more, looks at risk of over-burdening a presidency that must overcome the crisis sparked by the Irish vote.