Francois Hollande becomes France's new president

Live coverage of Francois Hollande being sworn in as French president  

Francois Hollande has been sworn in as president of France, becoming the first Socialist leader in 17 years to occupy the Elysee Palace.

Mr Hollande said he was fully aware of the challenges facing France, including the debt crisis and weak growth. He will later name his prime minister and fly to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Mr Hollande wants "a compromise" over the German-led focus on austerity as the way out of the economic crisis. On Monday, the value of stock markets and the euro fell amid continuing political uncertainty in Greece. The chairman of the eurozone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, insisted on Monday night that they would do "everything possible" to keep Greece in the euro.

'Compromises'

On Tuesday afternoon, Mr Hollande will fly to Germany for dinner with Chancellor Merkel, who says she will welcome the new leader "with open arms". But her embrace will hide some embarrassment, says the BBC's Europe editor Gavin Hewitt, after Mrs Merkel openly supported Mr Sarkozy in the election battle. "We don't think the same on everything," Mr Hollande acknowledged on French television on Monday. "We'll tell each other that so that together we can reach good compromises." Mr Hollande has demanded that a European fiscal pact that cracked down on overspending be renegotiated to include a greater emphasis on measures to stimulate growth, while Germany insists the treaty must be respected. Francois Hollande will be put to work almost as soon as his inauguration is finished Whatever their differences, the crisis in the eurozone will put them under huge pressure to compromise, our correspondent says. As the eurozone's two biggest economies - and biggest contributors to its bailout funds - Germany and France are key decision-makers over the strategy supposed to pull Europe out of crisis. According to official figures released on Tuesday morning, the French economy showed no growth in the first quarter of 2012. Growth in the final quarter of 2011 was also revised down to 0.1% from 0.2%. However, Germany's economy grew by a stronger than expected 0.5% in the first three months of the year. Following his German trip, Mr Hollande will hold his first cabinet meeting on Thursday followed by a visit to Washington to meet US President Barack Obama on Friday


I'm really interest in this notice because my mother is a Francois teacher, and she like a lot travelling to France. For this reason she is very interest about who will became the president. And I think about Hollande will make his work very good.

Good luck, Hollande!