Jacques Chirac

Article Outline

Introduction; Early Political Career; President of France

Introduction

Jacques Chirac, born in 1932, French politician, president of France from 1995 to 2007. Chirac replaced retiring Socialist president François Mitterrand. A conservative politician, Chirac served as prime minister from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988 and as mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995. Chirac is a Gaullist, a term used to describe those who favor the policies of former President Charles de Gaulle. Gaullists have historically supported a strong central government and independence in foreign policy.

Born in Paris, Jacques René Chirac studied at the Institut d'Études Politiques, a university for students interested in politics and diplomacy, and he earned a diploma in political science in 1954. In 1956 Chirac was drafted in the army and served in Algeria, where France was engaged in a colonial war. In 1957 Chirac returned to France and enrolled in the École Nationale d'Administration, a school for government service. He received his graduate degree in 1959 and became a civil servant.

Early Political Career

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In April 1962 Chirac joined the staff of Georges Pompidou, then prime minister under de Gaulle. This appointment launched Chirac’s political career. At Pompidou’s suggestion, Chirac ran as a Gaullist for a seat in the National Assembly in 1967. Chirac won the election and was given a post in the ministry of social affairs.

Chirac’s first high-level post came in 1972 when he became minister of agriculture and rural development under Pompidou, who was elected president in 1969. Chirac quickly earned a reputation as a formidable champion of French farmers’ interests. In 1974 Chirac was appointed minister of the interior. When Pompidou died in April 1974 and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing became president, Chirac was appointed prime minister. In that same year, he also became secretary general of the conservative Union of Democrats for the Republic (Union des Démocrates pour la République; UDR). Chirac resigned as prime minister in 1976, citing Giscard’s unwillingness to give him authority. He was then elected president of the UDR, which he reorganized into a neo-Gaullist party, Rally for the Republic (Rassemblement pour la République; RPR).

President of France

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First Term

In 1995 Chirac won election to the presidency in his third bid for the post, narrowly edging Socialist Party challenger Lionel Jospin. Shortly after taking office, Chirac plunged France into international controversy with a series of nuclear tests in the South Pacific atoll of Muniroa, a French possession. The tests brought widespread international condemnation. Chirac attempted to defuse the global response, which included a boycott of French goods, by committing France to a future nuclear test-ban treaty. On the domestic front, Chirac confronted the difficulty of realizing his bold campaign pledges to simultaneously reduce high unemployment in France and lower public debt ahead of France’s planned participation in a single European currency. Economic austerity measures introduced by Chirac and his conservative prime minister Alain Juppé, including budgetary cutbacks, proved highly unpopular.

In 1997 Chirac, amid rising public discontent, called early legislative elections in a gamble to bolster support for his economic reform program. The gamble backfired. The Socialist Party, joined by other parties on the left, easily defeated the conservative-led government, forcing Chirac into a new period of cohabitation with Jospin as prime minister. Shortly after the elections, Chirac suffered several foreign policy defeats when French proposals to admit Slovenia and Romania into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were rejected, and France’s readmission to the full NATO command structure was shelved. However, Chirac soon reasserted a strong role for France in international affairs. After March 1999 Chirac steered the French effort in NATO’s offensive against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY, see Serbia and Montenegro) over Yugoslav actions in Kosovo, and Chirac regained considerable popularity in the process. In February 2000 Chirac led the European Union (EU) opposition to the Austrian coalition government that included the far-right nationalist Freedom Party of Jörg Haider (see Austria). The EU regarded Haider’s views on immigration and his nationalistic attitude toward European integration as “intolerable.”

Another major development presided over by Chirac was France’s successful adoption of the single European currency, the euro, beginning in 1999. In addition, Chirac used his presidential prerogative to call a referendum in September 2000 to shorten the president’s term of office from seven years to five—the most far-reaching change to the French constitution in four decades. Chirac had initially opposed the five-year term, a measure supported by most of the nation’s political establishment, but he later joined the cause, and the referendum easily passed. Chirac also successfully fulfilled his campaign pledge to replace compulsory military service in France with a volunteer army, a reform completed in 2002.

Much of Chirac’s first term as president was clouded by corruption allegations, including charges of graft that allegedly occurred while he was mayor of Paris. Despite the continued rumblings of corruption charges, Chirac remained popular in France. Chirac received a significant boost in opinion polls following his declaration of “solidarity” with the United States after the September 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in 2001; his supportive stance was widely echoed across France. Then, in October 2001, the Court of Cassation, France’s highest appeals court, ruled that Chirac would not have to answer for corruption charges in court as long as he remained in office. The court ruled that Chirac was protected from prosecution by the doctrine of presidential immunity, although it noted that Chirac could be tried for corruption following the end of his term.

Second Term

In May 2002 Chirac was reelected president of France, overwhelmingly defeating the candidacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Front. Le Pen had stunned France, and the rest of Europe, when he slipped past Jospin in the first round of presidential balloting to qualify for the runoff election. Voters from the right and left turned out in large numbers to support Chirac’s candidacy. The Union for the Presidential Majority, a coalition of center-right groups supporting Chirac, won an absolute majority in the National Assembly. (The coalition was later renamed the Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP). The election ended a five-year period of cohabitation with the Socialist government of Jospin. Following the election, Chirac appointed interim prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to form a new government. In July, during the 2002 Bastille Day celebrations, an assassination attempt was made on Chirac as he passed soldiers in an open-top vehicle. He was unhurt in the incident; the assassin was believed to have acted alone.

In January 2003 Chirac joined with German chancellor Gerhard Schröder to publicly oppose a U.S.-led campaign to invade Iraq as part of its international war on terrorism. The United States, with strong backing from Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom, argued that Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction posed a grave threat to regional and international security. Chirac asserted that France, as a permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, would veto any UN resolution authorizing war. Joined by the governments of Germany and Russia, Chirac argued that UN inspectors should be given more time to determine if Iraq in fact did possess weapons of mass destruction. Chirac’s opposition failed to prevent the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which began without the explicit authorization of the UN in March 2003 (see U.S.-Iraq War). However, it contributed to the warm reception Chirac received in Algeria the same month. Algeria, a Muslim country, had opposed military action against the Muslim nation of Iraq. Chirac’s visit was the first state visit by a French president to Algeria since that country won its independence from France in 1962.

In January 2004 Alain Juppé, widely regarded as Chirac’s chosen successor as president, was one of 21 people found guilty of overseeing illegal payments to Rally for the Republic (RPR) workers during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Despite the conviction of a close Chirac associate, Chirac himself remained protected from prosecution by the doctrine of presidential immunity.

Regional elections held in March 2004 delivered another blow to Chirac’s standing. The UMP trailed the Socialists in almost all areas of France, and Raffarin’s government offered its resignation. Chirac reappointed Raffarin, however, as head of a new government, which remained committed to a program of public sector reform aimed at reducing the country’s stubbornly high budget deficit

In July 2004 Chirac announced France would hold a referendum to determine if the country would ratify a proposed EU constitution that promised greater political integration among EU member states. The previous month EU member states had agreed to the final text of the constitution, the result of more than two years of negotiations. France was not bound to hold a referendum, and Chirac’s move reflected his confidence that French voters supported the EU constitution. However, prior to the May 2005 referendum, opinion polls showed support eroding. The campaign against the constitution, led by parties on both the far right and far left, effectively raised many doubts about the implications of a stronger, more integrated EU. Chirac belatedly joined Prime Minister Raffarin in the campaign supporting a “yes” vote, holding firm to the official position that the constitution would boost France’s position in Europe. In a major confidence blow for the government, voters rejected the constitution by almost 55 percent. Prime Minister Raffarin duly resigned, and in his place Chirac appointed former foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, a trusted protégé who had served as a minister in Raffarin’s government but was not an elected member of the legislature.

In March 2006 de Villepin’s government ran into difficulties when it attempted to introduce legislation changing employment laws affecting those under the age of 26. The law provoked massive, student-led demonstrations across France. Chirac appeared on television to make a national address, announcing some concessions on the law. However, these concessions failed to assuage the anxieties that had produced the demonstrations, and they did not cease until de Villepin withdrew the law. The withdrawal of the law dealt a severe blow to Chirac and his government.

The UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, once a Chirac protégé but more recently a political rival, won the May 2007 election to succeed Chirac. A former interior minister, Sarkozy defeated Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal in France’s presidential election.

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Introduction

Early Political Career

President of France

First Term

Second Term