I am a strong believer that modern political life must rediscover a sense for symbolism. We need to develop a kind of political heroism. I don't mean that I want to play the hero. But we need to be amenable once again to creating grand narratives.

I often speak with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. When I speak with the Turkish president, I defend European positions. That is how we European partners must do things.

I had decided that I wanted a dog from an animal shelter. Normally, presidents have purebred dogs, but my is a Labrador-griffon mix. Absolutely adorable.

I thoroughly believe that reading and literature can help a society to better understand itself.

I have great respect for Angela Merkel, even if we have a lot of differences.

I think our responsibility as political leaders today, is to push our economic leaders to change their investment behavior, to decide new things, and to help workers to change their jobs. And I think the mistake that Donald Trump decided to make is exactly the mistake we made in France and in Europe. Which was to resist to the change in order to protect the old jobs. What we have to protect is people, not jobs. If you want to protect people, you retrain them.

We will succeed, because we are fully committed, because, wherever we live, whoever we are, we all share the same responsibility: Make our planet great again.