Nicolas Sarkozy's speech in Marseille on etb its countryside, February 21, 2012

My dear friends, today I came to talk about France. We do not talk enough of France. As if it was unfashionable to talk about France. As if we had come so get used to France, which are accorded more importance.

Young I loved France unknowingly. Many in my family came from afar.

I liked the sky under which I lived and yet it was not the sky of Marseilles.

I liked the sound of words.

I liked the songs, music, books.

I loved cities, so French way of a line of houses, planting trees along roads.

I liked seashores.

I liked a way to laugh, a way to be free, I liked a way to sample French life.

I liked a way to love.

Basically, I loved France unknowingly.

I loved France, young, without understanding the price that had to pay so many generations to bequeath us the land would become of our homeland.

I loved France as I loved the air we breathe

But I loved the merits without understanding what France was unique, that France had thousands of years of work and love and the blood shed by so many women and many men for that 'on hearing the name of France, there is no single person in the world who thinks freedom.

It took time to measure how if France was still so alive in my heart, she also owed to all those around the world continue to love France and continue to hope for France.

I have not stopped advancing in life feel how this idea of ​​France, which seemed so far removed from my daily life when I was young, there was actually present at every moment, how much France was human, how France was carnal and how, finally, France had helped shape me since childhood.

I remember that at the beginning I have been in politics because I wanted to act, I wanted to solve problems, I wanted to help people overcome their difficulties, I wanted to fight for ideas.

As I turned on all the years I realized that the struggle, the essential fight is one we lead the country that saw you born or the country that we recognize as his own. There is not a single fight that is superior to that which leads to his country.

Confronted daily with the daily difficulties of the French, I coined the belief that pulling every son of the policy, we always went back to France, which France eventually had to be the great subject of political and we could not separate the life of French destiny of France, which could not solve the problems of French without resolving those of France, that France was ultimately the only bulwark with which we could protect French.

Such is the conviction, my dear friends, I want to share throughout this campaign that we will live together.

The five years since the French elected me as President of the Republic have only strengthened this conviction.

A weak France can not protect the French. Older here well know, in the darkest periods of our history, those that have been most painful for the French, the misfortune has always come from what France was not strong enough.

When cowardice when the resignation when weak governments were passing at work, it is the French who have had to bear the consequences.

There are no French happy about the misfortunes of France. There are no French protected the weakness of France.

Since 2008, the economic and financial storm, probably the most serious and most dangerous the world has known since the 30s, France has resisted, France held. And the French have faced.

I know very well all the sufferings and all the difficulties that this crisis was created because in France, I learned, all the suffering and the difficulties of French always go back to the President of the Republic, because everyone turns to him to express his suffering, asking for help, because everyone looks at him as the last resort when you have exhausted all other.

I measure it should have been done again, what should have been done better. I have a duty of lucidity. And I do not pretend and I will never pretend that we have all succeeded.

But I mean, so that everyone understands that we have escaped a disaster. I mean it calmly but firmly: those who act as if nothing serious had happened for 3 years in the world, those who act as if the risks to which France had found himself confronted were not dramatic , those lying to the French, those do a disservice to France.

In two months it will be for each of you the moment of choice.

The circumstances are that the choice of French will be decisive. I want each of our compatriots may be able to decide by measuring issues. If today we do not understand the nature of the crisis and the risks it poses us, then not only can not judge the past but above all, we can not imagine the future, it is can not prepare for the future.

Hiding the crisis is not only dishonest, it's dangerous, because one does not defend against the dangers which one denies the existence, because it does not protect against the threats that we pretends to ignore.

Tell the French: "quiet sleep, there is no crisis, there is no risk" is playing with the future of the French is to leave them defenseless when the crisis and when the risks have caught. That is irresponsible and it is morally unacceptable.

My message to French, French to all, whatever their beliefs, is to tell them, remember, in autumn 2008 all banks of the world have almost disappeared. Remember, it was yesterday. If French banks were drawn into such a cataclysm is your savings, the fruit of your work, your savings, your wages, your jobs that would have been washed away.

We managed to avoid this catastrophe.

Then there was the economic crisis, the recession, which affected all countries in the world without exception. It took the state to intervene to finance the economy, to support the activity, to avoid again that everything collapses.

We managed, again, to avoid catastrophe.

And as if that were not enough, after that there was the public debt crisis, the crisis of Europe, the Euro crisis. It took that France is involved in every minute to prevent the Euro breakup would have prevailed throughout Europe and which would have cost so dear to the French, and especially the most vulnerable.

We managed once again to avoid catastrophe.

I say we, because I want to associate François Fillon and the whole government to the work that has been initiated.

My dear compatriots, my dear friends, and beyond you, to all the French, if only one French, if a single doubt of what I just said and he wants to know what we escaped, what everyone could have happened if France was not strong, I ask the French who doubt, to those French who doubt, to look at what is happening today in the Greek worker to think about what happens Today the Italian retired to imagine what it feels like the Spanish unemployed person who has so little chance of finding employment because unemployment is three times higher than in France.

I ask the French to imagine the Portuguese official with his treatment decreased by 25%.

I ask him to watch the thousands of American families condemned to live in mobile homes than unemployed because they can not pay the bills of their home.

In France, it is true, the debt has increased, for months many of our compatriots are difficult.

True, there are more unemployed.

True, it is difficult to find accommodation.

True, we can not retire at 60.

It's true, we have to work longer.

True, staff on two retiring will not be replaced but these decisions, I take them because they were difficult But if those decisions I'd not taken in time, where would we be aujourd 'hui? That is the question that should be asked.

The truth does not scare me.

The truth must not frighten France.

The truth is that France was not carried off by a crisis of confidence that has ravaged so many other countries in the world.

The truth is that the State has not failed.

The truth is that wages and pensions have not been lowered.

The truth is that unemployment did not explode elsewhere.

The truth is that thousands of French have been driven from their homes.

The truth is that our beautiful country there was no despair, the violence that has engulfed so many other countries so close to our heart and our borders.

We must confront the reality of the world the reality of the crisis to understand that more work is the only way to preserve our living standards, our purchasing power and come out on top of this crisis that pulls both country down.

More work is the only way not to leave our children a country that crumble under debts and deficits would lead them where people unable to say no to the smallest claim.

Our generation has no right to leave our children the task of settling the bills that we would not have had the courage to take.

If you are denied reality, one can not understand the efforts we need to do. And if we do not understand them, we will not make them. And if we do not do so are all the French who will suffer.

I do not want this suffering! Because it would be the consequence of the ease, demagogy and lies.

If France has fared better than others, is that it drew its strength from what it was best, in what has always allowed it to overcome the worst hardships, to remain a great country.

I refer to the work, I mean the effort, I mean the courage, I want to talk about intelligence, I mean the values ​​of responsibility and authority.

I mean the very strong sense of forming a single nation.

I refer to the ideal of the Republic, she wants to give a chance to all the talent, all the merits, it recognizes the value of work.

I mean this great thing in France called the state and which we can see how the crisis in the absence or weakness would have been dangerous.

For five years France has relied on these values, these institutions remain strong.

It was a very difficult task because we had to break habits, my dear friends, with ingrained habits for decades. And the first habits with which we had to break this bad habit is to always give in, always back away at the slightest pressure, facing the slightest protest.

Never have so many reforms have not been completed, but so late had been taken and the crisis has opened so many fronts, the crisis asked so much energy.

The beneficial effects of so many reforms that France was waiting have been masked by the damage of the crisis. But thanks to these reforms, France has resumed its values ​​and France will emerge stronger from the crisis.

If the French have suffered from the crisis, also thinking, that is proportion of errors that had been committed and that weakened France.

For too long the values ​​where does the strength of France were abandoned by the very people who had the responsibility to defend them.

The ideology of work sharing, the systematic cause of all forms of authority, the dilution of responsibilities France have weakened and made vulnerable French.

A force not watch France as a whole, as a common destiny, each is integral, but as a simple juxtaposition of communities and clients, by dint of giving everyone what he calls regardless of what it at all costs, by dint everyone has rights and more than that one no longer cares to meet her homework, it has weakened the company took the risk and it shatters in trial when she needed most of cohesions.

When we forget France, my dear friends, school absenteeism is tolerated, it takes offense to the suspension of family allowances and forget that a child who does not go to school, it is an immense wealth France, and squanders all his life, this child will be the responsibility of all.

When we forget France, we forget that those who do not work are always the responsibility of those who work. And if those who work are less and less numerous, the charge will eventually become unbearable.

When we forget France, we forget that it is the work of one who gives work to others and by sharing the work rather than encourage it, we collectively poorer instead of richer.

When we forget France, we forget that it is the workers who pay pensions and that if ever fewer workers and more and more retirees, it inevitably will come a day when pensions will not be paid.

When we forget France, we forget an abandoned territory is primarily a resource which the country is deprived.

When we forget France, we forget that in a nation all holds, that the prosperity of each depends on the prosperity of all, that the happiness of each also depends on the happiness of all. Prosperity in the midst of misery, happiness in the midst of evil, it can not last, it never lasts for long.

When we forget France, we forget that we can not do that with a country of managers, scientists, engineers. We forget that France without farmers without workers, without artisans, without plants, no workshops, no farms, would be a France that has lost some of its soul, its culture and identity, and above all it would France economically a thank you to the other.

When we forget France, we forget that the State is all French, the government debt and the debt of French is a single debt, we forget that we can not build a society and a prosperous economy on the ruins of the state, nor the prosperity of the state on the ruins of society and the economy.

Basically, my dear friends, France, is the name we give to the solidarity between the French today and solidarity between generations. This is France.

France, this is what calls us unceasingly to never sacrifice the future to the present.

France, it is the name by which we say the better our love for our children and our grandchildren.

France, it is the word that makes us remember with respect and affection of those who loved us enough to give us this beautiful country.

The workers who have told me, last week, at the Fessenheim nuclear power station: "Mr. President, they have sold us" know that we do not believe in her country when we are ready to stop tens of nuclear reactors in return for an electoral agreement is done on the backs of thousands of workers from the French nuclear industry.

I wonder what price is attached to the work. Are we capable of saying face to face, looking into his eyes a workman whose work we fly because we wanted to glean some voices on the green carpet of politicians and partisan negotiations?

I prefer to be in my place, I prefer to keep the discourse of truth that being in the place of those who do it because I, I will not appear before these workers to whom we said: we steal your job to gain the place we want.

Love France is to refuse to accept the 35 hours that put so many French companies unable to compete with foreign companies.

Love France is refusing to promise retirement at age 60 knowing that in less than 10 years it will no longer pay pensions.

Love France is refusing to increase spending and raise taxes amid the global debt crisis.

Love France is refusing to address immigration solely by ideological posture. This is a subject that we must discuss with gravity because a non mastered immigration is the cause of much suffering. And the first to suffer are those who are not capable of fitting welcome and these are often those is robbed of their meager savings by unscrupulous smugglers who have not hesitated to their lives at risk and are a bunch of criminals who deserve only the most extreme punishment.

We do not exploit the misery of others.

There would be some very serious consequences if we do not control immigration while unemployment remains so high: our welfare will go to bankruptcy, our social pact explode because we will not have the means to fund and then it will always be the weakest, the most vulnerable, those who are most in need of national solidarity will suffer the most.

I have never been, and I have not changed and I will not change for zero immigration which for a country like France just does not make sense. But refuse control, selective immigration challenge and leaving the door open to experienced immigration is irresponsible and it is morally wrong.

My dear friends, nothing is more dangerous than the health conscious who does not want to face the consequences of what she claims. Only account for a good conscience and its mirror image. Regularize massively open the valves, it is neither more nor less than a fault.

When you love France, it does not reduce the French nationality to an address and you do not take the risk of Community vote that would place on local elected immense pressure and communitarian shatter our republican pact.

When you love France, we want France to be mistress of her destiny and mistress home. This is love France.

When you love France, it is not proposed to ratify the Charter of regional languages ​​which is not intended to live regional languages ​​in which I believe, but to recognize language rights to all minorities and to place them under control of a European Court will judge regardless of our national history and our republican tradition.

It is communalism which is down the road and not the defense of a magnificent heritage of languages ​​and cultures that enrich our country.

I want to defend this heritage. I want to object to any communitarian drift because the drift ruin centuries of effort and sacrifice to build us a state, a nation, a republic which we can be proud of and we gain strength.

I remember those, there is not so long refused the burqa ban because their beliefs were not strong enough.

I remember those who wanted to separate men and women in the municipal pools because they were ready for any compromise with Republican values. No compromise with Republican values!

I see what is still happening in some school canteens.

I see every day the contested secularism by the very people who claim to defend against imaginary threats while their attacks on them are real.

When you love France, we defend those values ​​that are the opposite of communitarianism.

When you love France, you do not pit minorities against the Republic.

When you love France, you are not on the side of those who defend their interests are blocking the country and take French hostages in conflicts that concern only minorities protected by statutes they ended up thinking that they gave them all the rights.

When you love France, one is for public service continuity because the continuity of public service is the duty of public service employees.

When you love France, one is a prisoner of any pressure group, no union, no customers, no minority. We ask only one question, the question of the public interest.

Love France, it's take the word of France. The word of France, it is respected and honored.

When you love France, you do not lie every day from some to give pleasure to others. It keeps the same speech to everyone because make the same speech to everyone, this is the only way to meet the French.

When you love France, we say the truth to the French on what you want to do, otherwise it discredits a public speech that does not need to be discredited.

We must have the courage to say to the elites that some of them did not live up to its responsibilities by granting compensation that defied common sense. This minority has betrayed the values ​​it had to defend and embody.

My dear friends, we must have the courage to say to the youth it will not succeed without effort. We must have the courage to tell workers that they can not earn more by working less.

We must have the courage to tell the pensioners that we could not continue to pay the pension credit.

We must have the courage. The courage to love France, the courage to meet the French. This courage of the truth.

This campaign must be a truth campaign.

This truth, the French deserve and France needs it.

Where is the truth when it says at the same time we want to punish the thugs and repeal the law on recidivism and repeal minimum sentences?

Where is the truth when we do not say the same thing as the other person being addressed, where is the truth when they say everything and its opposite?

Where is the truth is when one side of the English Channel or the other, when one pretends to be Thatcher in London and Mitterrand in Paris?

We want to choose, mails must fall on the right day, choosing the right words. No sooner does one understood any proposal it is already removed. It's not how you run a country which is the fifth power in the world!

Where is the truth - unless we did not understand - when we say every day the opposite of the day before? Better to save meetings and rallies, this will become complicated!

One day it is argued that all illegal will be regularized.

But another day, no, this will be case by case.

One day it was announced, solemnly, the return to retirement at age 60.

But the next day they said we had to understand something else. We still do not know what. One even wonders if there is something else to understand!

One day they announced the end of the family quotient.

But the next day we hurry to say no, but we will still change everything. Change what? When ? How?

One day we announced the legalization of euthanasia.

Another day we declare that we have misunderstood.

But the end of life, my dear friends, is a painful subject. This is a subject I am sure he should not be exploited. Because euthanasia is an issue that involves so many deep and intimate things. It is a very human dilemma probably the law, as it does now, but that can frame my eyes it should not decide.

When you love France, you do not weaken the institutions that form the fabric of our social life.

The family, marriage belong to these institutions that we must deal with much precaution. Whatever the changes that the family, the marriage have known for decades, the family, marriage remain benchmarks, references remain deeply embedded in the collective consciousness and are part of our identity.

We do not want our identity is sacrificed to the fashion of the moment!

Basically, I am that each addresses such profound subjects as the end of life, that marriage, as filiation, the family, so soothed, respecting the suffering of one - because there is a lot of suffering - the anxieties of others, the personal convictions of each, whether philosophical, moral or religious.

Being part of the same nation, being French means accepting that what unites us is stronger than what divides us and that there is between each of us a link, a fraternal bond, a link solidarity, understanding, respect that we should not damage it by insulting us, tearing us or assuming promoting reckless and irrational ideas, again, to glean a few votes here or there.

This is the spirit in which I approach this campaign.

This is the spirit with which I want to meet the French.

In a campaign, there are beliefs that clash, there are opinions that fight, there are even opposing personalities.

But there is no reason to indulge in low attacks that would express a lack of consideration for French deserve a debate of a certain outfit.

A presidential campaign is for a man or a woman, a tough test, a test of truth and sincerity test. It must not however live this painful ordeal because a country is a special moment: we are going to meet the French, we listen, we talk to them.

I go to this meeting, no-protocol, without intermediary, I'm freer than I have ever been.

I go to this meeting straightforward as I am, without communication devices, happy to talk about our country and say the lessons I draw from my experience for the future of France.

I go with lucidity but I'm going with a convincing power that is in proportion to the love I have always felt for our country.

I go to this meeting with me in everything I've learned, suffering who spoke before me, the Head of State, sufferings which I could not answer.

That of the victim that has not found the culprit.

The woman or the mother weeping before the coffin of a soldier who died for France.

That of the unemployed whose factory has been relocated and who does not know, then there is nothing to do with his dismissal, how he will support his family.

I go to this meeting in the knowledge that the will can not do everything, but without will, my dear friends, we can do nothing.

Some consider that it is better not to try anything than take the risk of failure - how they say - at the risk of giving false hope.

But, my dear friends, if one wants nothing, if one does not try anything, if one never takes the risk of failure, then one can be certain that there is nothing more to hope at all. When might fail, as it may succeed. So I'd rather take the risk of always fail than give up the opportunity, even thinner, to succeed. If there is a chance, one chance, to prevent a life deteriorates, if a chance to save a job, if there is a chance, just one chance to avoid suffering, I will never resign myself to not attempt it.

I did so and I do not intend to change.

Sit back with a problem simply because it is difficult -I guarantee for five years I have cramps if I had done that! - Raise their arms to heaven and cried against unemployment that we tried everything or that the state can not do everything and therefore nothing is done, it is a conception of politics that will never be mine . I prefer to stop that becoming like that.

We have not always achieved what we set out, but in Lejaby, at Photowatt, at Alsthom, there are workers who are relieved because they have not been abandoned. There are thousands of workers who have saved their jobs that were condemned in advance through the Strategic Investment Fund, the Credit Mediator which nobody believed. Today we go ask them if they would have preferred that we might attempt do anything.

While trying even when it seems the odds are low. That is my conception of political responsibility.

The responsibility is a value I want to talk to the French because it has been too often overlooked.

Responsibility is the opposite of impunity.

Everyone must be accountable.

Everyone should bear the consequences of what he does, his mistakes, his mistakes, his failures as his successes.

Impunity for the fraudster, for the thug, that's not acceptable. But impunity in the top of the scale is not more.

When a prefect is not doing its job, I assume, change prefect.

When a judge makes a mistake, I assume he must be punished because there is no independence which exempts from liability.

































































































Long live the Republic !

