Fran?ois Hollande | |
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File:Fran?ois Hollande (Journ?es de Nantes 2012).jpg | |
Fran?ois Hollande | |
24th President of France | |
Incumbent | |
Assumed office 15 May 2012 |
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Prime Minister | Jean-Marc Ayrault |
Preceded by | Nicolas Sarkozy |
Co-Prince of Andorra | |
Incumbent | |
Assumed office 15 May 2012 Serving with Joan Enric Vives Sic?lia |
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Prime Minister | Antoni Mart? |
Representative | Sylvie Hubac |
Preceded by | Nicolas Sarkozy |
President of the General Council of Corr?ze | |
In office 20 March 2008 – 15 May 2012 |
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Preceded by | Jean-Pierre Dupont |
Succeeded by | G?rard Bonnet |
First Secretary of the Socialist Party | |
In office 27 November 1997 – 27 November 2008 |
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Preceded by | Lionel Jospin |
Succeeded by | Martine Aubry |
Mayor of Tulle | |
In office 17 March 2001 – 17 March 2008 |
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Preceded by | Raymond-Max Aubert |
Succeeded by | Bernard Combes |
Deputy of the National Assembly for Corr?ze's 1st Constituency |
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In office 12 June 1997 – 15 May 2012 |
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Preceded by | Raymond-Max Aubert |
Succeeded by | Sophie Dessus |
In office 12 June 1988 – 16 May 1993 |
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Preceded by | Proportional representation |
Succeeded by | Raymond-Max Aubert |
Personal details | |
Born | France |
12 August 1954
Political party | Socialist Party |
Domestic partner | S?gol?ne Royal (1978?2007) Val?rie Trierweiler (2005?present) |
Children | Thomas Cl?mence Julien Flora |
Alma mater | HEC Paris Institut d'?tudes Politiques de Paris ?cole nationale d'administration |
Signature | API's signature |
Styles of Fran?ois Hollande |
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Reference style | Son Excellence (Monsieur) |
Spoken style | Monsieur le Pr?sident |
Fran?ois G?rard Georges Nicolas Hollande (French pronunciation: [f???swa ?l??d]; born 12 August 1954) is the 24th and current President of France. He was also the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008 and as a Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corr?ze's 1st Constituency from 1988 to 1993 and then again from 1997 to 2012. He also served as the Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008 and the President of the General Council of Corr?ze from 2008 to 2012. As president of France, Fran?ois Hollande is also ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra.
He was elected President of France on 6 May 2012, defeating the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, and was sworn in on 15 May.[1] He is the second Socialist President of the Fifth French Republic, after Fran?ois Mitterrand who served from 1981 to 1995. He is also the first President to be elected without having prior experience as a Minister and / or Junior Minister since Paul Deschanel in 1920.
Fran?ois Hollande, Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy, was born to an upper-middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Fr?d?rique Marguerite Tribert (1927?2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who "had once run for the far right in local politics."[2][3][4][5][6] Hollande was raised Catholic but is now an agnostic.[7] The family moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a highly exclusive suburb of Paris, when Hollande was 13.[8]
He attended Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle boarding school, then HEC Paris, the Institut d'?tudes politiques de Paris (Paris Institute of Political Studies), and the ?cole nationale d'administration. He graduated from ENA in 1980[9][10] and chose to enter the prestigious Cour des comptes. He lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 while he was a university student.[11] Immediately after graduating, he was employed as a councillor in the Court of Audit.
After volunteering as a student to work for Fran?ois Mitterrand's ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election, Hollande joined the Socialist Party five years later. He was quickly spotted by Jacques Attali, a senior adviser to Mitterrand, who arranged for Hollande to stand for election to the French National Assembly in 1981 in Corr?ze against future President Jacques Chirac, who was then the Leader of the Rally for the Republic, a Neo-Gaullist party. Hollande lost to Chirac in the first round.
He would go on to become a Special Adviser to the newly elected President Mitterrand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. After becoming a Municipal Councillor for Ussel in 1983, he contested Corr?ze for a second time in 1988, this time being elected to the National Assembly. Hollande lost his bid for re-election to the National Assembly in the so-called "blue wave" of the 1993 election, described as such due to the number of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.
As the end of Mitterrand's term in office approached, the Socialist Party was torn by a struggle of internal factions, each seeking to influence the direction of the party. Hollande pleaded for reconciliation and for the party to unite behind Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission, but Delors renounced his ambitions to run for the French Presidency in 1995, leading to Lionel Jospin's resuming his earlier position as the leader of the party. Jospin selected Hollande to become the official party spokesman, and Hollande went on to contest Corr?ze once again in 1997, successfully returning to the National Assembly.
That same year, Jospin became the Prime Minister of France, and Hollande won the election for his successor as First Secretary of the French Socialist Party, a position he would hold for eleven years. Because of the very strong position of the Socialist Party within the French Government during this period, Hollande's position led some to refer to him the "Vice Prime Minister". Hollande would go on to be elected the Mayor of Tulle in 2001, an office he would hold for the next seven years.
The immediate resignation of Jospin from politics following his shock defeat by far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election forced Hollande to become the public face of the party for the 2002 legislative election but, although he managed to limit defeats and was re-elected in his own constituency, the Socialists lost nationally. In order to prepare for the 2003 Party Congress in Dijon, he obtained the support of many notable personalities of the party and was re-elected First Secretary against opposition from left-wing factions.
After the triumph of the Left in the 2004 regional elections, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but the Socialists were divided on the European Constitution, and Hollande's support for the ill-fated "yes" position in the French referendum on the European Constitution caused friction within the party. Although Hollande was re-elected as First Secretary at the Le Mans Congress in 2005, his authority over the party began to decline from this point onwards. Eventually his domestic partner, S?gol?ne Royal, was chosen to represent the Socialist Party in the 2007 presidential election, where she would lose to Nicolas Sarkozy.
Hollande was widely blamed for the poor performances of the Socialist Party in the 2007 elections, and he announced that he would not seek another term as First Secretary. Hollande publicly declared his support for Bertrand Delano?, the Mayor of Paris, although it was Martine Aubry who would go on to win the race to succeed him in 2008.
Following his resignation as First Secretary, Hollande was immediately elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as the President of the General Council of Corr?ze in April 2008, a position he holds to this day. In 2008 he supported the creation of the first European Prize for Local History (?tienne Baluze Prize), founded by the "Soci?t? des Amis du mus?e du clo?tre" of Tulle, on the suggestion of the French historian Jean Boutier. Fran?ois Hollande awarded the first prize on 29 February 2008 to the Italian historian Beatrice Palmero in the General Council of Corr?ze.
Following his re-election as President of the General Council of Corr?ze in March 2011, Hollande announced that he would be a candidate in the upcoming primary election to select the Socialist and Radical Left Party presidential nominee.[12] The primary marked the first time that both parties had held an open primary to select a joint nominee at the same time. He initially trailed the front-runner, former Finance Minister and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Following Strauss-Kahn's arrest on suspicion of sexual assault in New York City in May 2011, Hollande began to lead the opinion polls. His position as front-runner was established just as Strauss-Kahn declared that he would no longer be seeking the nomination. After a series of televised debates throughout September, Hollande topped the ballot in the first round held on 9 October with 39% of the vote, not gaining the 50% required to avoid a second ballot, which he would contest against Martine Aubry, who had come second with 30% of the vote.
The second ballot took place on 16 October 2011. Hollande won with 56% of the vote to Aubry's 43% and thus became the official Socialist and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election.[13] After the primary results, he immediately gained the pledged support of the other contenders for the party's nomination, including Aubry, Arnaud Montebourg, Manuel Valls and 2007 candidate S?gol?ne Royal.[14]
Hollande's presidential campaign was managed by Pierre Moscovici and St?phane Le Foll, a Member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament respectively.[15] Hollande launched his campaign officially with a rally and major speech at Le Bourget on 22 January 2012 in front of 25,000 people.[16][17] The main themes of his speech were equality and the regulation of finance, both of which he promised to make a key part of his campaign.[17]
On 26 January, he outlined a full list of policies in a manifesto containing 60 propositions, including the separation of retail activities from riskier investment-banking businesses; raising taxes for big corporations, banks and the wealthy; creating 60,000 teaching jobs; bringing the official retirement age back down to 60 from 62; creating subsidised jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young; promoting more industry in France by creating a public investment bank; granting marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples; and pulling French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012.[18][19] On 9 February, he detailed his policies specifically relating to education in a major speech in Orl?ans.[20]
On 15 February, incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would run for a second and final term, strongly criticising Hollande's proposals and claiming that he would bring about "economic disaster within two days of taking office" if he won.[21]
Hollande visited Berlin, Germany, in December 2011 for the Social Democrats Federal Party Congress, at which he met Sigmar Gabriel, Peer Steinbr?ck, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Martin Schulz;[22][23] he also travelled to Belgium before the United Kingdom in February 2012, where he met with Opposition Leader Ed Miliband; and finally Tunisia in May 2012.[24][25]
Opinion polls showed a tight race between the two men in the first round of voting, with most polls showing Hollande comfortably ahead of Sarkozy in a hypothetical second round run-off.[26]
The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April. Fran?ois Hollande came in first place with 28.63% of the vote, and faced Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round run-off.[27] In the second round of voting on 6 May 2012, Fran?ois Hollande was elected President of the French Republic with 51.7% of the vote.[1]
Fran?ois Hollande was elected President of France on 6 May 2012. He was inaugurated on 15 May, and shortly afterwards appointed Jean-Marc Ayrault to be his Prime Minister. He also appointed Beno?t Puga to be his military chief of staff, Pierre-Ren? Lemas as his General Secretary and Pierre Besnard as his Head of Cabinet.[28] On his first official visit to a foreign country in his capacity as President of France, the airplane transporting him was hit by lightning.[29] The plane returned safely to Paris where he took another flight to Germany.
For over 30 years, his partner was fellow Socialist politician S?gol?ne Royal, with whom he has four children?? Thomas (1984), Cl?mence (1985), Julien (1987) and Flora (1992). In June 2007, just a month after Royal's defeat in the French presidential election of 2007, the couple announced that they were separating.[40]
A few months after his split from S?gol?ne Royal was announced, a French website published details of a relationship between Hollande and French journalist Val?rie Trierweiler. This disclosure was controversial, as some considered it to be a breach of France's strict stance on the privacy of politicians' personal affairs. In November 2007, Val?rie Trierweiler confirmed and openly discussed her relationship with Hollande in an interview with the French weekly T?l? 7 Jours. She remains an employee of the magazine Paris Match.
Ribbon bar | Honour | Date Comment |
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Grand Master Grand Cross of the National Order of the Legion of Honour | 2012 ? automatic upon taking presidential office |
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Grand Master Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit | 2012 ? automatic upon taking presidential office |
Ribbon bar | Country | Honour | Date |
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Knight Grand Cross Order of the White Eagle | 16 November 2012 [41][42] |
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Knight Grand Cross Order of Merit of the Italian Republic | 21 November 2012 |
Hollande has had a large number of books and academic works published, including:
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fran?ois Hollande. |
Party political offices | ||
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Preceded by Lionel Jospin |
First Secretary of the Socialist Party 1997?2008 |
Succeeded by Martine Aubry |
Preceded by S?gol?ne Royal |
Socialist Party nominee for President of France 2012 |
Most recent |
Political offices | ||
Preceded by Raymond-Max Aubert |
Mayor of Tulle 2001?2008 |
Succeeded by Bernard Combes |
Preceded by Jean-Pierre Dupont |
President of the General Council of Corr?ze 2008?2012 |
Succeeded by G?rard Bonnet Acting |
Preceded by Nicolas Sarkozy |
President of France 2012?present |
Incumbent |
Regnal titles | ||
Preceded by Nicolas Sarkozy |
Co-Prince of Andorra 2012?present Served alongside: Joan Enric Vives Sic?lia |
Incumbent |
Catholic Church titles | ||
Preceded by Nicolas Sarkozy |
Honorary Canon of the Basilica of St. John Lateran 2012?present |
Incumbent |
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