France will do everything to regain AAA: PM Fillon

PARIS (Reuters) - The French government will do everything in order to regain its triple-A credit rating, Prime Minister Francois Fillon told Le Journal du Dimanche in an interview after rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded the country.

"It is always better to have the best rating," Fillon said in the interview due to be published on Sunday. "We are going to do everything to regain it."

Asked if he had previously exaggerated the importance of the triple-A rating, Fillon said: "For a long time, I have been calling for people to acknowledge the deficits and the reality of a crisis which seems to be the most serious since the 1930s."

(Reporting by James Regan)