The new president said on his first day in office that France needed to bring in more reforms quickly.
There is a demand for change. Never have the risks of inertia been so great for France as they are now in this world in flux where everyone across the world is trying to change quicker than the others, where any delay can be fatal,” he said.
Shortly afterwards, the pair put on their jogging kits and went for a brisk run around the Bois de Boulogne.
The BBC’s Caroline Wyatt, in Paris, says all this is a new and very different style for France, whose heads of state here have traditionally been patrician, somewhat remote figures.
It is clear that Mr Sarkozy and Mr Fillon are serious about getting this nation moving again, she says, beginning by setting their own personal example.
Mr Fillon’s renowned conciliatory skills will be much needed as prime minister if he is to succeed in a post often described as a poisoned chalice, says the BBC’s Alasdair Sandford in Paris.
Mr Fillon will lead the UMP party into parliamentary elections in June.
Opinion polls suggest the party will gain a majority, giving Mr Sarkozy and Mr Fillon the scope to push ahead with reforms

There are still some close contests to come, with the Democrats intent on moving into staunch Republican territory.
Votes are still being counted in Alaska – one of the Democrat’s most surprising target states, whose Senate delegation has been solidly Republican since 1981.
Incumbent Republican Senator Ted Stevens has been a dominant figure in Alaskan politics since 1968, when he first won his seat.
But he was convicted in October of lying about gifts he had received, and was already facing a tough re-election battle against the Democratic Mayor of Anchorage, Mark Begich.
A recount is expected in Minnesota, and Georgia is preparing for a run-off after neither candidate received the necessary number of votes to be declared overall winner.
There was some positive news for the Republicans, with voters in Kentucky and Mississippi returning their candidates despite determined efforts by Democrat rivals.
Meanwhile, voters in 11 states also elected governors, and in 36 states there were 153 proposals to be decided upon.
Voters in Colorado and South Dakota rejected initiatives that could have led to abortion bans. Washington became the second US state to allow people with terminal illnesses the option of doctor-assisted suicide, while Nebraska outlawed affirmative action.
Most controversially, voters in California approved a constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples. Thousands of gay couples have wed in the state since a court ruled in May that gay marriages could go ahead.

Concern is growing in the US about how to stop drugs being smuggled into the country from Mexico. There are also fears that the rampant violence between Mexican drugs cartels could spread across the border.
The boundary, some 2,000 miles (3,200km) long, between Mexico and the US is reported to be the busiest international border.
Every day, hundreds of thousands cross legally but every day also sees money and weapons smuggled south, and drugs brought across to the north.
In the Texan city of El Paso and the Mexican city of Juarez, monitoring the border has become a huge problem. The two communities live right up against one another, at the heart of a drugs smuggling route that is worth billions.
If you head out with the US Border Patrol here you get a good idea of how hard it is to stop traffickers getting across.
Agent Joe Romero and his colleagues have a huge desert region to patrol.
Fences have been built in some places, but Agent Romero agrees that surveillance and fences alone cannot stop the drugs trade.
“It’s a huge business. It’s a major part of an economy. Whether it’s a legal economy or an illegal economy it’s a big part of that. And there’s a big demand for it. That side is supply, and there’s a big demand for it on the US side.”

A former left-wing guerrilla has taken a commanding lead in several exit polls from Uruguay’s presidential election.
Most polls show Senator Jose Mujica has narrowly failed to secure the 50% needed to avoid a run-off vote.
If a second round is officially confirmed, he is likely to face his main conservative rival, the former president, Luis Lacalle.
The winner will replace outgoing socialist President Tabare Vazquez and take office in March next year.
Exit polls on Sunday suggested 74-year-old Mr Mujica had gained about 48% of votes, with Mr Lacalle trailing on around 30%.
A 29 November run-off would take place between the two frontrunners.
Mr Mujica, a senator of the governing left-wing Broad Front Party, was a former member of the rebel Tupamaros movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mr Lacalle, famed for having survived an attempt to poison him – and other National Party leaders – with tainted wine in the 1970s, is a 68-year-old lawyer.
He has pledged to remove the income tax imposed by President Vazquez and trim the size of government in the country of 3.4 million.
During the election campaign, he sought to capitalise on concerns among some voters about his rival’s militant past.
Mr Lacalle has crafted a political comeback 14 years after leaving office when his senior aides were accused of corruption.
As well as presidential and congressional elections, voters also took part in a referendum.
That will decide whether to revoke a law which gives immunity to former security officials accused of human rights abuses during Uruguay’s period of military rule.

A number of Madoff’s victims attended the hearing.
Speaking outside the courtroom, Cynthia Friedman told the BBC Madoff was “evil incarnate”.
She and her husband lost $3m with Madoff. “He has no remorse. He’s a horrible man,” she said. “He stole from charities, he’s just an awful man.”
Many of his victims told the court they opposed his guilty plea, because they wanted the case to go to full jury trial so they could find out exactly what he had done with the money.
Yet most clapped when he was handcuffed.
“I think the only thing he feels is regret that he got caught,” said one investor.
“But the best view of all was when they put the handcuffs on him – you know, he might be in that several thousand dollars suit that the investors paid for – to see that is justice
The only person accused in the giant fraud surrounding his firm, Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities, Madoff is said to have run a Ponzi scheme, whereby early investors were paid off with the money of new clients.
Madoff’s 11 charges include four counts of fraud. In addition, he pleaded guilty to three counts of money laundering, making false statements, perjury, making a false filing to the US financial watchdog, and theft from an employee benefit plan.
Madoff himself estimates that the fraud totalled $50bn.

Children born or living near the power lines were 1.7 times more likely to contract leukaemia than those in the control group, the research found.
Some studies have already shown an association between some types of electromagnetic fields and increased childhood leukaemia.
Research author Dr Gerald Draper said other research suggested power lines might account for 20 to 30 of 500 cases of childhood leukaemia each year.
But, he said, his work indicated a far smaller number of cases were affected.
The findings were “surprising” and prompted further research, he added.
The Department of Health said it would not comment on the findings until Dr Draper submitted his final report.
Children living under high-voltage power lines could run double the risk of getting cancer, new research reportedly suggests.
Those living within 100 metres of the cables are more likely to suffer from leukaemia, the study indicates.
The Childhood Cancer Research Group at Oxford University studied 70,000 children under 15 for the Department of Health report, half of whom had cancer.
The seven-year study is reported in the Times and the Independent newspapers.
The research looked at the prevalence of high-voltage power cables near children’s homes.

US songwriter Diane Warren will write the lyrics to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music for this year’s UK Eurovision entry, it has been announced.
Warren, whose songs include Toni Braxton’s Un-Break My Heart and How Do I Live by LeAnn Rimes, said she was thrilled to be working with a “legend”.
Meanwhile, singer Damien Flood has become the first act to be thrown off BBC One show Your Country Needs You.
The act which wins the series will represent the UK in Russia in May.
Warren – who also wrote Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time, I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith, and Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now – said: “I hope that a song from Andrew Lloyd Webber and me will spell a change of fortune for the UK at Eurovision
“We will write the best song possible for the event and for the artist.”
Lloyd Webber, meanwhile, said he was excited to be working with “one of America’s greatest songwriters”.
“This is a massively new direction for me and I cannot wait to get started,” he added.
On Saturday night’s show, Graham Norton revealed that Flood and singer Charlotte Finlay-Tribe had polled the least phone votes from viewers and asked Lloyd Webber to save one of the acts.
The act which will represent the UK in Moscow on 16 May will be announced on 31 January.

The Indian mission was in certain respects much more challenging than the Chinese maiden lunar mission which was a simple national orbiter.
Chandrayaan-1 was literally a two-in-one mission, since the main satellite was to orbit at 100km above the Moon and then a tiny gadget the size of a computer monitor was to attempt a “landing” on the Moon’s surface.
The mission did this on 14 November 2008. No nation to date had succeeded in both a lunar orbiter and an impactor at the first attempt.
This was more than an experiment. It was also a brave global geo-political statement since the probe that crash-landed on the Moon also permanently placed India’s flag on the lunar surface.
India became the fourth space bloc to have done this after Russia, America and the European Space Agency.
This is hugely significant because, if ever the Moon’s resources are to be divided, India’s rightful share can be claimed having achieved what others have not been able to do.
There are many other firsts to this mission.
In a highly un-Indian trait, the Indian space agency delivered the Moon mission with no cost or time overrun at $100m and within eight years of it first being suggested.
The spacecraft carried 11 different sophisticated instruments, one of the largest suites of experiments ever carried to the Moon.
The objective was to remotely map the resources of the Moon, prepare a three-dimensional atlas of it and look for water.
All instruments worked for about 10 months in the hostile lunar environment. Dr Nair calls it a “more than 100% success of Indian technology”.
India also created a new model of international partnership.

There had been fears that a lengthy incursion could lead to clashes with the Iraqi Kurds, who have virtual autonomy in northern Iraq, and jeopardise the stability of the country’s most peaceful region.
The withdrawal came a day after US President George W Bush urged Turkey, a Nato ally, to wind up the incursion and get out of Iraq. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates personally conveyed the message during talks in Ankara on Thursday.
Following the withdrawal, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe described Turkey’s incursion as “targeted and relatively short”.
He added: “There is one thing that remains clear, and that is the United States, Turkey, and Iraq all will continue to view the PKK as a terrorist organisation that needs to be dealt with.”
The Iraqi authorities, while stressing they did not support the PKK, objected to Turkey’s military incursion, saying it violated their sovereignty.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, welcomed the end of the incursion.
“This withdrawal indicates the credibility of the Turkish government’s statements that the military operation is limited and temporary,” his office said in a statement.
The PKK in northern Iraq claimed victory over the Turkish military.
“Because of the fierce battles between the PKK and the Turkish forces, the Turkish forces have withdrawn,” said Ahmed Danees, the group’s foreign relations spokesman.

In her book, entitled High on Arrival, she alleges she first had sexual intercourse with her father on the night before she was to be married to a member of the Rolling Stones’ entourage.
“I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father,” she writes.
Phillips describes those first sexual encounters as rape – but says the relationship later became consensual and ended when she fell pregnant.
She was unsure who had fathered the child and claims to have had an abortion paid for by her father.
“I never let him touch me again,” she told Winfrey, calling the alleged incest “an abuse of power”.
But she said she forgave her father on his deathbed in 2001, describing him as “very tortured man”.
John Phillips married four times, having Mackenzie – his oldest daughter – with his first wife Susan Adams.
He formed the Mamas and the Papas with his second wife Michelle, whom he divorced in 1970.
In a statement, Michelle Phillips said her stepdaughter’s public disclosure was “an unfortunate circumstance” and “very hurtful for our entire family”.
One of the most popular bands of the 1960s, the Mamas and the Papas are best known for their hits California Dreamin’ and Monday, Monday.
Mackenzie Phillips’ half-sister Chynna had pop success with 1990s group Wilson Phillips.