Today's Date:

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Basically, our project to make a success of our Franco-European destiny, mapped out by the Head of State on several occasions (...) is an ambition, an imperative of our times, against the background firstly of (...) the enlargement, with the ten new countries who have just joined the EU, and, secondly, of course, the draft Constitution (...).

We must ensure that France actively, unpretentiously, but effectively, takes up this challenge of a new Europe, based on a new geography with a new organization. I think all this requires us to be clear-sighted. Obviously we are, today, a founding people of the EU, but we’re one among twenty-five. And so we’ve got to realize our need for alliances, strategies, hard work and professionalism, and how necessary it is for us to integrate the whole European dimension into each of our national policies.

I’m really keen today for every minister to realize the extent to which Europe is a domestic issue, pertinent to our various policies. This means we have to change our behaviour and also make a number of reappraisals – I’m thinking of our disputes with Europe, and a number of difficulties which, for the future, we shall have to overcome.

Clearly, when we work with Europe we must, very probably, be far more politically committed, endeavour to understand our partners better, listen to them more, respect them and make sure that we listen to them enough for us to make ourselves heard.

To make a success of this Franco-European future, we have to balance our requirement for sovereignty and our “Europeanness”. M. Barnier talked to you about this: obviously we have, today, to find this balance in some major reforms for French society lying ahead of us. I’m thinking of the immigration policy, necessary for France, who is facing a significant population deficit. Today there are nearly 400,000 unfilled job vacancies. But we still haven’t got what Dominique de Villepin calls “chosen [targeted] immigration”. We have to devise this immigration policy for France, but obviously working together with our European Union partners. I think our policy on research also has to take Europe on board. It’s right for us to step up our own research efforts, to develop a strategy, for example, for cancer research; it’s also right for us to look at what’s being done elsewhere in Europe so as to pool our efforts, and galvanize researchers. Immigration, research, defence – our defence industries are also at the heart of this European area, relevant today for the exercise of our national sovereignty.

This is, I think, the goal we must have for the coming months, for this forthcoming meeting with the French on Europe; [we don't want] an electoral debate, people to look at the issues in very black and white terms, we want a radical reform of our national thinking, balancing France's values and ambitions within a European area which we want to share. This is our project.

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Thanks to this strategy, combined with the fact that a number of our reforms are now viewed as acceptable, we have been able to clear the country's way forward and give the French more confidence in the future. This is, in particular, the purpose of the social cohesion plan, so that French women and men may share in the return of growth. This is the whole thrust of the projects on which we are embarking – I'm thinking of the major international projects: on the nuclear front, the EPR, ITER, for the energy of the new century. There are also the major transnational road, rail and maritime infrastructure projects which are contributing to our active efforts to develop this sustainable and equitably shared growth.

It is sometimes said that France isn't always Europe's good pupil. There is one subject in which we are the good pupil: growth, since, while, admittedly, the origin of the growth is the speeding up of world trade, in the Euro Area we have something the others haven't got. It's the "French plus"; it's this "plus" achieved through our reforms; it's the "plus" we've got through our ability to mobilize for a sustainable growth which we want to share. (...)./.