French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday answered Britain's equivocations about that nation's future in the European Union with an impassioned call for more, rather than less Europe.
Setting out his vision for Europe's future in a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Hollande argued: "Europe cannot just be a market, a budget, a currency - precious as those may be."
Nor could Europe be an "accumulation of nations, each of which goes to the union for what it sees as useful to itself and itself alone," he said.
"Europe is first and foremost a political will," he said. "It's a project, but we can't keep arguing about what's already there," he said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron last month announced he would seek to renegotiate looser ties with the EU and then hold a referendum on whether Britain should stay in the union, on those terms, or leave.
Hollande rejected the idea of an "a la carte" or "two-tier" Europe, saying he would prefer a "differentiated" structure.
A differentiated Europe would be one in which states decided to move ahead together on projects, on a case-by-case basis, such as some eurozone members did recently in adopting a financial transactions tax, he explained.
Hollande also touched on the fraught negotiations around the EU's 2014-2020 budget, the harm being done to struggling economies by a strong euro currency, and his decision to go to war in Mali.
The EU's budget is the main agenda of a leaders' summit starting Thursday.
Britain is leading a group of net contributors demanding deep spending cuts.
Hollande said he was in favour of some savings, as long as they did not affect social cohesion or agricultural policies or funding for the "poorest of the poor".
"Compromise is possible, but it must be reasonable," he said.