I perfectly understood President Obama's attitude throughout the French presidential campaign. He had no reason to distance himself from Nicolas Sarkozy. It's the basic solidarity that leaders who worked together owe to each other.

I'm not a lukewarm European. I know that the German-French friendship is indispensable, no matter who the countries' leaders are.

I could have made a fortune in cheeseburgers, but I finally chose politics.

An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.

I won't wait until the end of my term to say I made mistakes at the beginning. That's too late. I will try to adopt the proper behaviour, if the French give me the chance, right from the start.

Symbols mean a lot in politics. They indicate a will and create new realities.

What the French want is coherence, stability and justice. If I am in a favorable position today, it's because my fellow citizens want to make the effort to straighten out the country, and at the same time they want it to be just and equitable.