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He said the government would push ahead with reforms and debt reduction.
Standard and Poor's said Europe's austerity and budget discipline alone were not sufficient to fight the debt crisis and may become self-defeating.
The downgrade stripping France of its top AAA rating was announced on Friday.
The government is on a communications campaign to tell the French there is no need to panic and that the policies of reform and debt reduction will continue as planned, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris.
Mr Fillon told a news conference that if France was in the firing line, it was primarily because of its exposure to the crisis in the eurozone.
"This decision constitutes an alert which should not be dramatised any more than it should be underestimated," he said.
"This decision was expected, even if one could find it came at the wrong time, given the efforts made by the eurozone, which investors are starting to see."
It was not government policies that were under attack from the ratings agency, he said, and so those economic policies would be maintained, with the goal of cutting spending and bringing the annual budget back into surplus by 2016.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also spoke on Saturday, saying Europe still had a "long road" ahead to restore investor confidence, after the multiple credit rating downgrades of nine eurozone countries in total.
On Friday, S&P's said France was being downgraded one notch, to AA+. The country still has a top AAA rating from the other two main ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch.
S&P's also said Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal were cut two notches, with the latter two given "junk" ratings. Germany kept its AAA rating.
Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta were the other countries downgraded.
Credit ratings are used by banks and investors to decide how much money to lend to particular borrowers.
The cut in the so-called sovereign ratings of governments is likely to lead to most other borrowers domiciled in the same countries - including banks and companies - being downgraded.
Although the move has been widely expected, it is still likely to make it somewhat more difficult and expensive for borrowers from those countries to raise money, including for the governments themselves.
Emergency teams have found two more bodies in the partially submerged Costa Concordia cruise liner that sank off the western coast of Italy.
It brings to five those known to have died after the ship, carrying more than 4,000 people, hit rocks on Friday.
The coastguard said divers had found the bodies of two unidentified elderly men trapped in a flooded area.
Earlier three survivors were found, more than 24 hours after the ship ran aground near a Tuscan island.
Coastguard spokesman Filippo Marini said the two elderly victims were "found on the third floor in a meeting area section of the ship".
Capt Francesco Schettino: "We were last to leave the ship''
He said the bodies were being taken to the mainland for identification.
Shortly before they were recovered, Tuscan regional official Enrico Rossi said 17 people remained unaccounted for.
The ship's operator, Costa Crociere, said the vessel had been following its regular course on the first day of a Mediterranean cruise when it hit a submerged rock.
Police are investigating why the accident happened in calm conditions, a few hundred metres from the island of Giglio.
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