"They have decided to confer with each other regularly, in particular before big European meetings, to try to harmonise their positions on European issues as well as on international ones," spokesman for the Elysée, David Martinon, told the Associated Press.

This is not the only informal grouping of large member states. German and French leaders hold summits every two months and joint cabinet meetings twice a year.

Mr Martinon said that the relationship between German chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy worked very well in the meetings of the eight most industrialised countries (the G8), on talks on a new EU reform treaty, and more recently, when solving the problem of the management of Europe's biggest aerospace company, EADS.

Mr Sarkozy has long argued that the bigger EU countries should take the lead in steering the enlarged organisation, although this tends to rankle smaller EU countries who resent any suggestion of being dictated to by the big powers.

Meanwhile, the new UK foreign minister, David Miliband, held his first speech outlining the foreign policy challenges facing the Brown government on Thursday (19 July).

The UK's EU membership needed to become "a greater asset in foreign policy" he said, supporting the new treaty's proposal for a single representative for the bloc's foreign policy. "It just makes sense," he added.