PRESIDENCY
OF THE
REPUBLIC
______
EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
Toulon (Var, France) – Thursday, 1 December 2011
Ministers,
Members of Parliament,
Mr Mayor of Toulon, my dear Hubert,
Fellow citizens,
Three years ago, on 25 September 2008, at the worst moment of the financial storm that was to plunge
the global economy into the greatest crisis since the Second World War, I spoke to the French people
from this very same hall.
I did not listen to those who advised me to say nothing for fear that in speaking the truth, panic would
result. It was my firm belief that on the contrary in order to preserve confidence, to avoid fear, it was
necessary to speak the truth to the French people.
And the French people were ready to hear that truth.
To tell them the truth was to tell them that France could not be sheltered from a planet-wide crisis.
It was to tell them that this crisis was grave, that it would last, that it would have consequences for
growth, for unemployment, for purchasing power.
To tell them the truth was to tell them that the banking system was under threat, that their savings deposited in those banks were under threat but that we would allow no bank to go under, that we would
not allow a single French man or woman to lose even a single centime of his or her deposits.
Not a single bank closed down, not a single centime of any deposit was lost thanks to the plan to save
the banks and the guarantees provided by government.
It was not the bankers who were helped.
It was not the banks’ shareholders who were protected.
It was the savings of the French people that were saved, along with their jobs, because the collapse of
one bank would have led to that of all the others, and the whole economy would, deprived of credit,
have collapsed.
And it did not cost the taxpayer a single centime.
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To tell the truth to the French people was to say to them that the State could not go on indefinitely
funding current expenditure and expenditure for solidarity by borrowing, because all debts have to be
paid back eventually.
To tell the truth to the French people was to say to them that the crisis was structural and required
structural responses, that it called for reform to be speeded up, not for it to be halted or slowed.
To tell the truth to the French people was to say to them that in order to emerge from the crisis they
had to work more, not less.
I know that the lives of many French people are harder today after three years of crisis.
I know that despite all the steps that have been taken, many French people have suffered and continue
to suffer.
Everybody has had to make efforts, everybody has had to make sacrifices.
But we should take the time to look around us at the situations in which those European countries that
have not taken the full measure of the crisis find themselves, those that did not made the required effort in time. They have been obliged to lower wages and pensions and make massive increases in tax.
In 2008, I said that new foundations had to be found for capitalism. I said that finance had to be made
more ethical.
The G20, which France wished to create, helped to preserve confidence, which was shaken everywhere.
It is always possible to deplore the fact that the G20 did not go fast or far enough. But if we look at
where we have come from and what has been accomplished in the last three years, it is a genuine revolution that has begun: for the remuneration of traders, for tax havens, for banks, for commodities markets, nothing will ever be the same.
In September 2008, here in Toulon, at the heart of the storm, I set out a prospect for the future: the
prospect of a capitalism of production, of regulated globalisation, of finance under control, of sustainable development, of a new role for the State in the economy, of a new European and global governance.
Beyond the emergency that the government of François Fillon had to face day after day, with a courage and determination to which I pay tribute, in order to protect the French people, France’s policy has
been defined resolutely for the last four years with that prospect in mind. I have never abandoned a
single one of those objectives even for a day.
***
But today, fear is back.
The fear that destroys confidence.
The fear that paralyses consumers, that prevents investors from investing, entrepreneurs from doing
business, bosses from hiring and bankers from lending.
That fear has a name: it is the fear that France will lose control over its destiny.
The only way in which that fear can be kept at bay is to tell the truth.
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The truth is that the crisis is not at an end and that there can be no political project that does not start
out from a diagnosis of the crisis and its sheer scale. To deny the crisis is to close off every prospect
for the future.
What is called the sovereign debt crisis, of which Europe is bearing the full brunt, is a continuation of
the same crisis. It is the crisis of private-sector debt that has spilled over into a crisis of public debt. It
is the same crisis, one that after having hit the banks, is now hitting governments.
That crisis is hitting every major developed country, whether they have been governed by left-wing or
right-wing majorities, and whatever their policies have been in recent decades.
We need to look for the common origins that have led the world into the situation in which it finds
itself today.
It is in the institution, beginning in the late 1970s, of a form of globalisation that knows no rules
other than those that guarantee freedom of trade that we can find the source of our current difficulties.
In the late 1970s, rather like a returning pendulum swing, the ideology of laissez-faire triumphed to the
point that the world forgot every lesson that it had learned from the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Financial globalisation became embedded as a way of artificially compensating for the ravages caused
in the developed countries by globalisation without rules.
It was necessary to enable the surpluses of some to finance the deficits of others.
It was necessary to enable increased debt to offset the unacceptable decline in the living standards of
households in the developed countries.
It was necessary to fund a social model that was straining under the burden of its deficits.
It was inevitable to ensure that financial capital could seek elsewhere the profits it could no longer
hope to obtain in the developed world.
And thus there came into being a gigantic debt production machine.
The developed countries thus sought salvation down the only road left to them: flight into ever greater
debt.
In some countries such as France, it was the State that took on debt. Not a single balanced budget
since 1974! In other countries, in England or Spain for example, for many years families took on more
debt. In still others, such as the United States, both families and the State became more heavily indebted at the same time.
The extravagant growth in the financial sector that spread quite incredible amounts of debt had as a
consequence the financialisation of the economy. It placed the economy under the exclusive domination of the logic of speculation and obsession with the short term. We have now seen the dramatic
consequences for industry, for the environment, for inequality and for the decline in the value of work.
Once the flight into greater debt becomes impossible because the lenders no longer want to lend, because the enormous pyramid of debt, hitherto hidden by the complexity and the sophistication of global finance, becomes apparent to all as an enormous risk, a new economic cycle can begin.
The new cycle will be very different from the one that preceded it. The cycle that is now at hand will
be a cycle of debt reduction that will make the economic pendulum swing back towards work and
production, which the developed countries had tended to sacrifice excessively.
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The move from a major cycle of increasing indebtedness to a major cycle of debt reduction will be
accompanied by an adjustment that will face the economic policies of all developed countries.
I do not believe that it would be economically accurate, nor morally acceptable to attribute the difficulties that we are experiencing to the French people.
We are not at the end of the Thirty Glorious Years. We are not leaving behind thirty years of prosperity whose excesses must be corrected.
We are not leaving behind thirty years in which the French people have refused to make the slightest
effort to confront competition from the emerging economies.
For thirty years the French people have not consumed more than they have earned. On the contrary,
they have saved. French households are among those that save the most in the world.
For thirty years, the vast majority of the French people have endured increasing stress, increasing tension, increasing fatigue. They have found it more and more difficult to look positively to the future. I
am thinking particularly here of the younger generation, who have encountered ever greater difficulties in entering the world of work.
This situation has been all the more difficult to live through for the fact that for the last 30 years the
efforts made by the French people to be more productive have been considerable. They have shown
courage.
And above all, for the last thirty years, those in work and who are proportionately less and less numerous have seen their income heavily burdened by the need to provide for those, more and more numerous, who live for longer, whose student years last ever longer, who are unemployed, or in distress due
to the accidents of life.
To tell the truth to the French people is to say to them that this situation, which is unsustainable over
time, has been so suddenly and drastically worsened by the crisis that we can no longer go on as we
were.
It is for that reason that pension reform could no longer be put off and had to be accelerated. To deny
that reality is to lie unforgivably to the French people. The reform we have put into effect that guarantees the funding of the pensions of the French people for the future was a socially just decision. To
allow people to enter unfunded retirement at 60 was a decision that was socially unjust.
To tell the truth to the French people is to hide from them none of the consequences of the crisis and
the efforts it must entail for all of us.
If the French people feel anxious when they wonder what their future and that of their children might
be it is because they have the feeling that their lives are prey to crises for which they are not responsible, that they are no longer masters of their future.
To give the French people back control over their future, France’s mastery over its destiny must be
restored. And for that it is necessary to stride forward with determination into the new economic cycle.
France must prepare itself for this.
There are three ways of responding to the crisis.
The first is denial. To explain that it is not serious, that the crisis is merely a pretext. That is to lie to
the French people and to prepare the way for disasters from which France would not recover.
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The second is to opt exclusively for austerity, rigour, deflation. That would be to choose lower wages
and pensions. It would be a choice that would place the full weight of the crisis on purchasing power.
It would be a choice that would drag everything down, a choice that would risk plunging the economy
into a recession, perhaps even a depression.
A different choice is possible. And that is to respond to the crisis through work, through effort and
through control over expenditure. It is an adjustment that is positive. It is a choice that preserves living
standards. Between lower pensions and working for longer, I choose the second solution. Between
earning less and working more, I am convinced that the second solution is to be preferred to the first,
that it is fairer and that it will allow us to emerge from the crisis rather than make it worse. It is to
choose effort, work, and it is the policy that is being followed with constancy by the government.
In the world as it is, with the challenges we must face, with the demographic trends as they are, retirement at 60 and a 35-hour week were grave, culpable errors for the consequences of which we are
paying heavily today and which we have had to redress.
The crisis is revelatory first and foremost of our weaknesses. But if we can just see how to learn the
lessons from them, crises can also indicate the road to reconstruction and they can give politics a degree of responsibility and scope for action that are, when all is said and done, unprecedented since the
Second World War because we need to imagine, to reinvent everything from scratch.
What we must do first is once again to cope with what is most urgent, to avoid becoming a target for
speculation by dispelling all doubt as to our ability to control our indebtedness and repay our debts.
Because doubt will raise the cost of our debt.
In reducing our deficits, we are loosening the grip of markets on us, we are preserving control over our
destiny.
To reduce our deficits we must eliminate bad expenditure, spending that is useless, that can be dispensed with without reducing the quality of public service, that can be compensated for with reasonable efforts to raise productivity, spending that stems from poor management, poor control, expenditure
that we have allowed to drift through lack of courage to reform or lack of foresight.
For decades now, we have been spending too much and often ineffectively. That cannot go on. The
habit the State had got into of always saying ‘yes’, not to those who needed it most but those who
could shout loudest or cause the worst blockages. That cannot go on.
We must reduce our current expenditure by being more attentive to the usefulness of public spending.
We must continue to reduce staffing levels in public service by keeping to the rule of non-replacement
of one in every two retirees. We must do so with determination. But also calmly and collectedly, without giving way to the febrility and sudden surges of markets.
That is why at the same time as we are economising we must continue to encourage work and therefore overtime, maintain the reductions in social charges and continue to invest because the key to our
future lies in productivity and competitiveness.
France enjoys exceptional advantages that enable it to cope with all forms of competition and hardship. Of all the major developed countries, France is the one whose institutional system has stood up
best to the crisis. Thanks to its institutions, France can be governed even in testing times. It will not be
by changing to a Sixth Republic, which would in reality be just a return to the Fourth, that France will
control its destiny more effectively. We have already seen the era of horse-trading between parties.
The result was impotence, dishonour and confusion. In a world in which it is necessary to reach fast
decisions coolly and calmly, without ideological prejudice, that is culpable whimsy that France cannot
afford.
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When the global economy entered recession, the French social model turned out to be effective in
softening the impact. It has helped the economy to regress less in France than elsewhere.
But how could we imagine that it can be preserved without adapting it to the conditions of our time?
We do not educate, we do not provide healthcare as we did in the past. Criminality is not the same as it
was in the past. Inequality is not the same. And above all, a new form of inequality has appeared that
makes life more difficult for those working at the bottom of the social ladder compared with a minority who wish to take advantage of the system without taking on their share of its duties.
We cannot fund our social welfare system as we did in the past simply by levies on wages when borders are more open and when we need to confront competition from countries where wages are low.
Reforming the funding of our social model has become a matter of urgency.
We cannot keep the organisation of the social welfare system as it was just after the War in an era
when more and more people move between companies, sectors and professions during their working
lives.
Faced with the economic and financial storm, to have, as France does, a strong State backed by a long
administrative tradition has turned out to be a considerable advantage, whereas a weak State, deprived
of all authority, can now be seen as one of the main causes that allowed many countries to be carried
away in the storm.
France has advantages envied by many countries around the world. It has dynamic demographics,
many young people, talented business people, researchers and engineers, a high-quality workforce that
is hardworking and well trained. It has a long industrial and agricultural tradition, expertise produced
by the work of generations.
It will not be by abandoning our energy independency and turning our backs on nuclear power in
which so much intelligence and money has been invested by France for more than half a century that
France will use its advantages to the full.
It is not by choosing a work-sharing policy, which has failed everywhere in the world, that France will
use its resources to best advantage.
That is to turn our backs on progress.
It is work that creates work, investment that generates investment.
Working more and better, getting more and better training, investing massively and better, all these are
key levers to enable France to get in step with the new economic cycle.
At a time when in France, like most major developed countries suffering from the global crisis, unemployment is rising, it is our duty to seek out every possible solution to create more jobs. The crisis
must not lead us to simply give up. And it is not because of a presidential election that we should wait.
It is right now that we must fight every inch of the way, that we must mobilise every form of intelligence, every willing effort. We will not win the battle for jobs without the heads of companies, without the social partners. That is why next January I shall be inviting all the social partners to take part in
a summit on employment so that all concerned can offer their solutions and make proposals. We must
have the courage to face up to the big issues and to lift the taboos on what is holding back French
competitiveness.
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We have not tried everything where jobs are concerned. When we see unemployment rising, we have
no right to say that we can do nothing about it, even if we do not have control over everything. But
ultimately only growth will put an end to mass unemployment.
At the entry into a debt reduction cycle that brings recessionary tendencies with it, action in favour of
growth needs to be more vigorous than ever. That crucial moment when a new model for growth begins to emerge – that is what we must not miss.
The triple revolution of digital technology, environmentalism and knowledge changes everything. It is
disrupting every mode of production. It is causing growth to shift from the physical to the virtual, from
quantity to quality, from standardisation to innovation.
Alongside capital and labour, it confers new importance on other factors of production: intelligence,
knowledge, imagination. University autonomy, the Grenelle consultation process on the environment,
the research tax credit, the 35 billion in investment for the future in higher education, in research, in
the technologies of the future are preparing the way for this vast revolution. We must persevere.
This is not the time to lose courage, to fall back, to turn in on ourselves, to take refuge in opposition to
change, in cautiousness, to reject progress.
It is a time for work, for investment, for enterprise. It is a time when the State must once again innovate, show enterprise, invest, when it must energise those who invent, who create, who build businesses. OSEO, the National Loan programme, the Strategic Investment Fund, all these are tools to finance
this long-term revolution. We must carry on down that road.
But we shall not win back control over our destiny on our own. We shall not bring finance back under
control on our own. We shall not change the rules of globalisation on our own. We shall not get back
on the path to growth on our own.
We all need to understand that France is so caught up in the world, its economy so immersed in the
global economy, that there is no difference between internal policy and external policy, between national and European policy. Whether inside or outside, it is one and the same policy that a country
such as ours must implement to confront one and the same crisis, a global crisis.
To tell the truth to the French people is to say to them that isolation is not a solution, that we do not
have a choice between opening up or battening down because closure would be fatal to our economy,
to our jobs, to our living standards. There is just one destiny for closed societies: decline. Economic,
intellectual and moral decline.
It is by being lucid about this, by accepting reality that we will be able to exert influence in Europe
and the world and lay down limits that we do not wish to see breached.
This means that we will refuse to erase our borders. They are the precondition for our freedom, our
democracy, our solidarity.
This means that we shall defend our identity, our culture, our language, our way of life, our social
model.
This means we shall refuse to accept the uncontrolled immigration that would ruin our welfare system,
that would destabilise our society, that would disrupt our way of life, that would overturn our values.
Immigration is productive if it is kept under control so that those we take in can be welcomed in the
best possible circumstances, so that they can come to share our history, our values, our way of life.
It is a certainty that regularisation of all foreign nationals in the country illegally would draw in an
uncontrollable influx of yet more.
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This means that we cannot tolerate persistent dumping, unfair competition, the pillaging of our technologies that is destroying our factories.
Ultimately, the only way we can protect ourselves is to become the builders of change alongside others, rather than solitary adventurers on a road to nowhere.
We should be aware that if we fail, working together, to change the ground rules, the world is in danger of plunging into selfish individualism and protectionism and we would be heading for disaster
because then we risk travelling down exactly the same road as the world did in the 1930s.
There is a reality that we all need to understand, that we all need to accept: sovereignty can be exercised only with others.
Europe does not mean less sovereignty but more sovereignty because Europe means greater capacity
for action.
Sovereignty is more easily defended with allies than alone. That is the great lesson to be learned from
the history of the 20th century. To abandon our seat as a permanent member of the Security Council
and our right of veto would be no more and no less than a culpable error. We would not have been
able to help the peoples of Libya and Côte d’Ivoire to win their freedom.
France and Germany, after so many tragedies, have decided to unite their destinies, to look together to
the future. To go back on that strategy would be unpardonable.
History and geography have made Germany and France either rivals or partners. Chancellor Adenauer
and General de Gaulle made a historic decision when they chose friendship.
With Germany and France united, the whole of Europe is united and strong. If France and Germany
are disunited, the whole of Europe is disunited and it is weaker. I shall be welcoming Chancellor Merkel to Paris next Monday and together we shall be making proposals to safeguard the future of Europe.
We each have our history; we each have our past wounds. When we talk about money, Germany remembers its history. We must understand that and we must respect it.
We each have our institutions, our political culture, our concept of the Nation. In one case it is federal
and in the other unitary. We need to understand that difference. We must respect it.
France and Germany have chosen convergence. I shall not go back on that choice. That does not mean
that one wishes to hang on the coattails of the other, nor that both wish to abandon their identities to
the point of merger.
Choosing convergence is not to choose imitation but to choose together to learn the lessons of the experience of each.
Choosing convergence is to choose joint working, shared effort to build at the heart of the European
economy a zone of stability and confidence that will be the engine of European competitiveness. I
shall spare no effort in ensuring that that comes about.
Europe is no longer a choice. It is a necessity. But the crisis has shown up its weaknesses and its contradictions. Europe must be rethought. It must be put on a new footing.
This is a matter of urgency. The world will not wait for Europe. If Europe does not change fast
enough, History will be written without Europe.
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Of that France and Germany are convinced.
Europe needs more solidarity. But more solidarity demands more discipline.
That is the first principle in putting Europe on a new footing.
Because solidarity must not encourage laxity.
Europe needs more politics. By which I mean more political responsibility.
Europe without politics, Europe on automatic pilot, simply applying competition and free trade rules
blindly, is a Europe that cannot cope with crisis. It is a Europe that is disarmed. It is a Europe that is
condemned to passivity. It is a Europe with which we want nothing to do.
Europe needs more democracy. Because Europe is an enterprise that cannot succeed without its peoples. Because if its peoples distrust Europe, Europe will regress. A more democratic Europe is a Europe whose political leaders make the decisions.
More politics is the second principle in putting Europe on a new footing.
Putting Europe on a new footing does not mean an onward march to a more supranational Europe. It
does not mean reopening old quarrels between the supporters of a Europe of nations and a federal Europe.
Europe will put itself on a new footing by pragmatically learning the lessons of the crisis. The crisis
has driven Heads of State and Government to take on ever greater responsibility because ultimately it
is they who hold the democratic legitimacy that permits them to take the decisions. The road to European integration is through intergovernmental relations because Europe will need to make strategic
choices, political choices.
Within the Euro zone, we must decide now to go forward fearlessly towards more qualified-majority
decision-making.
The Europe that is open to the winds, the Europe that fails to protect itself against dumping, the Europe that opens up its markets without demanding reciprocity from its competitors, the Europe that
allows products to enter that do not comply with social and environmental rules, that cannot go on.
Europe must negotiate every inch in defending its commercial interests.
The Europe that ensures the application internally of the principle of free movement and which fails to
control its external borders, that cannot go on. Schengen must be rethought.
The Europe that tolerates social dumping and fiscal dumping between its Member States, the Europe
that accepts the fact that subsidies it pays to some of its members to help them catch up with the others
are used to lower their social charges and taxes in order to indulge in unfair competition with the other
members, that cannot go on.
Europe cannot leave its industrial groups at the mercy of all the world’s predators because it forbids
them to group together in the name of a false concept of competition. Europe can no longer ignore the
absolute necessity of an industrial policy to support our industries and our exports.
Europe must defend its common agricultural policy because in a world of scarce resources, food security is a key factor in independence.
Europe is going to have to make crucial choices in the weeks to come.
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Those choices can no longer be those of the 1980s.
The crisis is an accelerant.
The crisis is a major challenge for Europe. Probably the greatest challenge it has had to face in the
whole of its existence.
We should not hide our heads in the sand – Europe may be swept away by this crisis if it does not get
a grip on itself, if it does not change.
But in Europe there is the Europe of 27 and the Europe of the euro.
At the heart of the European crisis there is the euro crisis. It is the more serious of the two. It could
destroy everything. What will be left of Europe if the euro goes, if Europe’s economic heart fails?
When we chose to go with the euro, we were divided between those for and those against. Each side
had its reasons and the arguments of each were worthy of respect.
But that debate is behind us. The euro exists. Its disappearance would have dramatic consequences for
the French people. Our debt would become unmanageable. The collapse in confidence would paralyse
everything. The French people would become poorer… We have no right to allow such a disaster to
come about.
We should see the euro crisis for what it is: a crisis of credibility, a crisis of confidence.
It will be resolved only by restoring credibility, by restoring confidence.
If we want the euro to survive, we have no choice: we must confront in total solidarity all those who
doubt the euro’s viability and who speculate on its disintegration.
The total mutual solidarity of all the countries in the euro zone must be absolutely clear. It must be
clear that what has been done for Greece, in very specific circumstances, will not be done again, that
no country in the euro zone will now be placed in a situation of default. It must be absolutely clear that
in the future no investor will lose a centime on repayment of any loan extended to a country in the
euro zone. That is an issue of confidence and confidence is the key to everything.
It must be clear that every country and every institution is working tirelessly for that total mutual solidarity.
That is the reason for the Government of the euro zone that France wishes to see and which will gather
together the Heads of State and Government to take decisions.
That is the reason why France proposed the creation of a European Monetary Fund to provide an instrument for European solidarity able to come to the aid of countries in difficulty. The Fund will mobilise the necessary resources to put up defences against speculation. We shall ensure its long-term viability, we shall strengthen it and it is my wish that we should allow it to take decisions on a qualified
majority basis.
Naturally, the European Central Bank has a crucial role to play. There is debate as to what its statutes
allow it to do. It is a debate to which I do not wish to contribute. The ECB is independent. It will remain so. I am convinced that faced with the risk of deflation that threatens Europe, the Central Bank
will take action. It is up to the ECB to decide when and by what means. That is its responsibility. Nobody should doubt that it will face up to that responsibility, and indeed I am pleased to note that it has
begun to do so.
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It is not possible to envisage total mutual solidarity without stricter discipline. If we want more solidarity, we must have more budget discipline. We must discuss together all our budget policies, not in
order to ensure that they are identical everywhere despite the differences in circumstances, but to ensure that they converge rather than diverge from each other. We should examine our budgets jointly.
We should institute faster, more automatic and more stringent sanctions for those who do not meet
their commitments. We should strengthen the systems for prevention to ensure that the slippage we
have seen is not repeated. Every country in the euro zone must adopt a golden rule that enshrines in its
legal system the objective of balanced budgets. France must adopt it. Ideally, if all concerned can
show a sense of responsibility, this should be done before the presidential election. If not, it should be
done immediately afterwards.
There can be no single currency unless economies converge. If the gaps in living standards, productivity, and competitiveness widen between countries, sooner or later the euro will be too strong for some,
too weak for others; and the euro zone will disintegrate.
Convergence must be the keyword for the euro zone.
It is a process that will inevitably be long and difficult.
Since the beginning of the debt crisis – let us be honest – Europe has disappointed. Not fast enough,
not far enough, not strong enough. I hear those criticisms. I have sometimes shared the impatience felt
by observers. But the task is a difficult one. The Treaty of Maastricht has turned out to be imperfect. It
provided for preventive mechanisms but with many gaps, for sanctions, but applied very little, and
there are no emergency instruments.
We have had to reinvent everything, to rebuild everything, and we have in some cases rediscovered
that our concepts of economic policy and monetary union had continued to differ despite ten years of
shared existence.
Now, in extreme circumstances, after the long road we have travelled, we must get back to what is
essential, and solemnly reaffirm it. That is why France is arguing, alongside Germany, for a new Treaty.
More discipline, more solidarity, more responsibility accepted before our peoples and genuine economic government. That is our vision for the future of the euro zone and future Treaty reform.
To ensure that in the world of tomorrow Europe will be able to make its voice heard and to breathe life
into a very ancient idea of civilisation to which it is attached above all else, it is for that that France is
fighting.
To ensure that in the world of tomorrow each of us, by developing, will contribute to the development
of the others rather than each seeking to develop at the expense of the others, it is for that that France
is fighting.
To ensure that in the world of tomorrow cooperation prevails over confrontation, it is for that that
France is fighting.
To ensure that in the world of tomorrow its values, its lifestyle and its culture are not doomed to disappear, it is for that that France is fighting.
To ensure that the French people do not see disappear all the grand and beautiful things they have built
through their hard work, their intelligence, their generosity, it is for that that France is fighting both
internally and externally.
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And France is fighting without arrogance, but tirelessly, in the firm belief that even at the lowest point
of the worst economic crisis to threaten the world for three-quarters of a century, it is a bearer of hope
that must not be extinguished.
Long live the Republic.
Long live France.
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