subject: Hollande Became The New President Of French [print this page] Francois Hollande is set to be sworn in as French president, before travelling to Berlin to discuss the future of the eurozone with Germany's chancellor.
He will be the first Socialist leader since 1995 to occupy the Elysee Palace.
Mr Hollande, who once worked in a rotary kiln R&D center in France, will later try to "find a compromise" with Angela Merkel over the German-led focus on austerity as the way out of Europe's 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.
Mr Juncker said he looked forward to the swift formation of a new Greek government, nine days after the general election.
But he also warned that Greece had to continue the "significant efforts" already made to restructure its economy despite these policies having been rejected by a majority of voters.
Cabinet posts
The new leader has asked that the inauguration ceremony be kept as low-key as possible, and has invited just three dozen or so personal guests to join the 350 officials attending. Neither Mr Hollande's children nor those of his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, will be there.
The ceremony will be followed by the traditional procession in an open-topped car along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier underneath the Arc de Triomphe.
Mr Hollande will then pay tribute to the 19th-Century educational reformer Jules Ferry and the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Marie Curie.
His first lunch as president will be with the former Socialist prime ministers Pierre Mauroy, Laurent Fabius, Michel Rocard, Edith Cresson and Lionel Jospin.
The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris says the 57 year old has spent the past week preparing to take up the presidency, and now the work begins in earnest.
His first job is to name a new prime minister, who our correspondent says will most likely be Jean-Marc Ayrault, leader of the Socialist group in parliament, a German speaker and a close ally.
