I am a partisan and artisan of Europe. But I draw the lessons of my experience in government.

If the US economic landing is soft there will be no consequences (for Europe).

For a long time many believed that there would be an automatic adjustment and counted on a rapid increase in the wages of the emerging nations, on our advances in technology and the costs of transport preventing disruption. But this reassuring analysis is out of date.

But Maastricht was not the end of history. It was a first step towards a Europe of growth, of employment, a social Europe. That was the vision of Francois Mitterrand. We are far from that now.

The single currency should allow the European Union, and therefore France, to balance its monetary strength with the United States. It should help us adjust to the development of China.

I am a partisan and artisan of Europe. But I draw the lessons of my experience in government.

Thanks to the euro, our pockets will soon hold solid evidence of a European identity. We need to build on this, and make the euro more than a currency and Europe more than a territory... In the next six months, we will talk a lot about political union, and rightly so. Political union is inseparable from economic union. Stronger growth and Euorpean integration are related issues. In both areas we will take concrete steps forward.