My adversary is the world of finance.

Is France a northern European export powerhouse, or a Mediterranean indebted and dependent economy? Yes to both.

Everyone says Francois Mitterrand had huge charisma. But before he was president they used to call him badly dressed, old, archaic and say he knew nothing about the economy until the day he was elected. It's called universal suffrage. When you're elected, you become the person that embodies France.

There are tensions abroad where people don't understand our attachment to the freedom of speech, we've seen the protests, and I would say that in France all beliefs are respected.

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

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.

That is now my mission: to provide a European vision of growth, employment, prosperity - in one word, our future.