As Mr Begley notes, Dreyfus's wife, Lucie, changed her name and fled Vichy France for the free zone in the south.
Pushed by France, the euro zone will formalise summits of its 17 leaders, to be held twice a year after EU meetings at 27.
France, the euro zone's second-largest economy, finds itself in the middle: not in recession, but at risk of being sucked into the Mediterranean vortex.
Germany, France and other euro zone states have so far described the 130bn-euro figure agreed in October as a red line that must not be crossed.
Sip a cocktail created by award-winning mixologist Stephen Martin (declared Best Mixologist in France 2009 by Cocktail Zone), and watch the Eiffel tower sparkle as its lights twinkle for five minutes every hour on the hour every night until 1 am.
Greece's primary deficit is now smaller than those of several other countries in the euro zone, including France, the Netherlands, Spain and Luxembourg.
To nervous euro-zone bond markets France looks a lot closer to Greece than to Germany: a potential problem country, not part of the solution.
An export-led surge in Germany has pushed GDP growth to 3.7%, against only 1.6% in France and a euro-zone average of 1.7% (see article).
There's a chance those numbers could be revised upwards, but the country will still clearly lag behind the euro zone, and behind France and Germany in particular.
Yet there was nothing new here: he was merely quoting the saving needed to meet France's promise, under euro-zone rules, to curb its deficit from 8% of GDP this year to 3% by 2013.
The government is ducking an even more crucial issue: France's loss of competitiveness inside the euro zone.
Although debt-laden Italy and Spain are in the market's cross hairs, France's own high indebtedness places the euro zone's second-largest economy in a precarious spot.
Then came the European Financial Stability Facility, but it turns out to be too puny to halt the bond vigilantes' rampage through the euro zone, and anyhow rests in part on France's waning ability to join Germany as a guarantor by retaining its triple-A credit rating.
WSJ: Agenda | Irwin Stelzer: Euro-Zone Shark Still Has Its Appetite
And there is one country that has historically said "non" to the transfers of sovereignty that might put the euro zone on a long-term stable footing: France.
North-south divisions are hardly new in the EU. When the euro was planned in the 1990s many German politicians wanted a currency zone comprising only Germany, the Benelux countries and France.
France is considered a rock solid, core member of the euro zone, and its troubles are of great concern.
Beyond the second half of this year, however, the scope for France and Germany to pull away from the rest of the euro zone seems more limited.
The fear is that a Europe of 25 will turn into little more than an economic zone, less glued together politically, and in which France will struggle to retain its traditional influence as Germany looks east.
On the no-fly zone, the big push seems to be coming from Britain and France.
The UK and France are working on a UN Security Council resolution for a no-fly zone, however Russia has already stated its opposition to military intervention.
The economic announcements out of the euro zone proved inconsequential today with Flash PMI figures for Services and Manufacturing in France, Germany and the entire Euro area coming in right in line with expectations.
Following the weekend political developments in France and the Netherlands, the German-inspired fiscal pact, agreed by euro-zone leaders in Brussels in December, could also be delayed or thrown into question.
In September 2010, the EU again called on Bulgaria to take urgent action to tackle crime and corruption, and later in the year France and Germany announced that they would block Bulgaria from joining the Schengen passport-free zone until the country had made "irreversible progress" in this area.
Beyond that, France has made no secret of its desire for decision-making among the 17 euro-zone members and sidelining the British.
Mr Sarkozy, in particular, sees an opportunity to turn the euro zone into an exclusive (and perhaps more protectionist) hard core, dominated by France and Germany.
The zone's biggest economy by far, Germany, is in recession and, like France, is planning to cut taxes to kick-start its economy.
France protested by pulling its aircraft out of the force that has been patrolling the no-fly zone over southern Iraq (it had earlier withdrawn from the northern patrol).
The major economies of Germany and France did show modest growth in the third quarter, which did mitigate the overall contraction in the Euro zone.
The spread of a debt crisis across the euro zone was an important factor in the bailout package for Ireland, according to officials in both France and Germany.
Such a zone would reflect the separate coastal Alawite state created on and off between 1920 and 1936 when France was the colonial power in Syria, according to Osama Klaib, a Sunni lawyer from the Homs area and now a Tripoli-based member of the opposition Syrian National Council.
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