President Morsi temporarily gave himself sweeping new powers last month, and pushed ahead a referendum on a controversial new constitution, sparking a political crisis.
Next to all this, Mr Hollande, a Socialist hack who led a fractious party for 11 years and has never had a ministerial job, is a debutant: his biggest crisis was a 2005 party split over the draft European Union constitution.
But the Portuguese had hoped that if national leaders signed the treaty in person, the symbolism of the event would draw a line under the crisis provoked in 2005, when French and Dutch voters rejected the original constitution.