There cannot be prosperity without security.

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.

There is just one France... one single nation, united in the same destiny.

I don't want to leave my successor and my children to pay for France's debt.

France, after the month of May, will share trust with the current leadership of the United States which, on many subjects, has tended to take useful positions in our view.

We're all taking part in this solidarity. The French, the Germans, just like all the Europeans in the ESM - the eurozone's new rescue fund. Let's stop thinking that there's only one country who's going to pay for the others. That's false.

Mitterrand had a sense for symbols, and he was the first Socialist president since 1958. He wanted to show that there is historical continuity, a connection with the great figures of French history.