Hold the Freedom Fries. The new French President-elect François Hollande wants the world to know that he speaks English—better than proudly pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy—and isn’t out to “make things difficult for Barack Obama” on issues like Afghanistan.

“Yes, I speak English, more fluently than the former president. But a French president has to speak French!” Hollande told Slate.fr—in English— in a wide-ranging interview published one day after he beat Sarkozy in a runoff election…

Hollande said he saw potential areas of agreement with Obama on economic issues and praised the American president for charting a different foreign-policy course than his predecessor.