I want to say a rough equivalent of "I'm sure you'd agree that it's important to ...".
I don't really recall hearing a French equivalent, so I've written "Je suis sûr que vous êtes d’accord que c'est important de..."
I was told that it might be more French sounding to just say "Comme il est important de..." but to me that kinda loses a bit of what I was trying to say.
Is there an equivalent that's used for this phrase?
If you want something more idiomatic and less a word by word translation, I would suggest:
Vous conviendrez avec moi de l'importance de...
Otherwise, if you want to keep "I'm sure you", here is a closer albeit longer one:
Je suis sûr que vous conviendrez qu'il est important de...
To be honest, the way you said it :
Je suis sûr que vous êtes d’accord qu'il est important de
is a good way to say it. It does not sound weird at all. I'm a french canadian though, so maybe in Europe they don't say that.
If you want a rough equivalent I'd try something like,
These phrases are very slightly less aggressive, I'm not comfortable with telling other people what I'm sure they must be thinking.
The following is basically just proposing another way to say the last half of your example sentence
(i.e., “[êtes/être] d’accord que c'est important de..."),
which I think could also be said as “[être] d’accord sur l’importance de… .”
This rewording would, however, also make it easier to rephrase, perhaps a bit more diplomatically, the entire sentiment using “…nous sommes…d’accord…”
instead of having to tell someone directly and in no uncertain terms just how sure you are about how they think (i.e., that they surely must agree with you).
(see ChrisW’s good answer [+1, btw], especially the third option [where both “nous” and “sur” are used] and the mention of 'agressiveness' in the last sentence).
(In addition, using “nous” (instead of “vous”) would also avoid whatever redundancy/ambiguity issues that might/might not arise with/without the use of “avec moi.”
Since ChrisW has already proposed the totally nonaggressive use of “nous sommes” with “J'espère que nous sommes d’accord … ,” I’ll propose a few that maintain some of the presumptuousness found in your example:
Est-ce que nous sommes d’accord sur l’importance de… ?
Il semble que nous soyons d’accord sur l’importance de… .
Il me semble que nous sommes d’accord sur l’importance de… .
Nous sommes d’accord sur l’importance de… ./[, n'est-ce pas?]
Nous sommes certainement d’accord sur l’importance de… . /[, n'est-ce pas?]
Nous ne pouvons qu’être d’accord sur l’importance de… . /[, n'est-ce pas?]
"Je suis sûr que vous êtes d’accord ..." sounds weird.
I am suggesting :
Je suis certain que vous reconnaissez l'importance de ...
