"We want a financial summit to take place before the end of this year, preferably in November," he said. "Europe will not let this crisis pass without taking action."
EU leaders gathered in Brussels on Wednesday for a two-day summit.
Sarkozy said that the summit should take place in New York, "where everything started," and lead to "a new capitalism."
A joint statement by leaders of the G8 members - the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan and Russia - said that changes were necessary to the "regulatory and institutional regimes for the world's financial sectors to remedy deficiencies exposed by the current crisis."
"We look forward to a leaders' meeting with key countries at an appropriate time in the near future to adopt an agenda for reforms to meet the challenges of the 21st Century," the statement said.
"I believe there is scope for agreement in the next few days that we will have an international meeting to take common action ... for very large and very radical changes," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
At the EU summit, the 27 countries also expressed support for a plan put forward on Sunday by officials from the 15-nation eurozone. The plan includes guarantees on bank deposits up to 100,000 euros ($136,760).
The French leader also said the issue of an emergency summit would be discussed this Saturday during a Council of Europe meeting with U.S. President George Bush that would also be attended by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
The current global credit crunch started in the United States and quickly spread to Asia and Europe, wrecking havoc on world stock exchanges.
In the light of the financial crisis, the EU has delayed until next month a decision on a new partnership and cooperation agreement with Russia.
The EU's relations with Russia have been hit by the situation surrounding the Georgian breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Talks - already delayed over objections from Poland and Lithuania - were suspended at an emergency summit on September 1 to discuss the Georgian situation.
Following a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in early August, Russia launched a five-day military operation to "force Georgia to peace" and on August 26 it recognized South Ossetia and another disputed Georgian region, Abkhazia, as independent states.
"In due course we can discuss the partnership and cooperation agreement. I don't think today is the day to restart that," said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Wednesday.
