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Édouard Balladur

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Édouard Balladur
163rd Prime Minister of France
14th Prime minister of the Fifth Republic
In office
29 March 1993 – 10 May 1995
PresidentFrançois Mitterrand
Preceded byPierre Bérégovoy
Succeeded byAlain Juppé
Personal details
Born (1929-05-02) 2 May 1929 (age 95)
İzmir, Turkey
Political partyUnion for a Popular Movement
SpouseMarie-Josèphe Delacour
OccupationEconomist

Édouard Balladur (born 2 May 1929) is a French right-wing politician. He served as Prime Minister during the second "cohabitation", under François Mitterrand, from 29 March 1993 to 10 May 1995. Candidate for presidency in 1995, he came in third and was defeated in the first round.

Biography

Balladur was born in İzmir, Turkey to an Armenian family with long-standing ties to France. His family emigrated to Marseille in 1935 with their five children. In 1957, he married Marie-Josèphe Delacour, with whom he had four sons.

He started his career in 1964 as advisor of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. After Pompidou's election as President of France in 1969, Balladur was appointed under-secretary general of the presidency then secretary general from 1973 to Georges Pompidou's death in 1974.

He returned to politics in the 1980s with Jacques Chirac. A member of the Neo-Gaullist party Rally for the Republic (RPR), he was the theoretician of the "cohabitation". Indeed, he explained that if the right won the legislative election, it could govern without Socialist President François Mitterrand's resignation. This situation took place from 1986 to 1988. As Minister of Economy and Finance, he sold off a large number of public companies and abolished the wealth tax. He appeared as an unofficial deputy Prime Minister in the cabinet led by Jacques Chirac. He took a major part in the adoption of liberal and pro-European policies by Chirac and the RPR. After Chirac's defeat at the 1988 presidential election, a part of the RPR reproached him to be responsible of the abandonment of the Gaullist doctrine but he kept the confidence of Chirac.

Since Jacques Chirac refused to renew "cohabitation" with President Mitterrand, Édouard Balladur served as Prime Minister after the 1993 legislative election. He was faced with a difficult economic situation but he did not want to make the political errors of the previous "cohabitation". If he failed to impose his project of minimum income for youth, he led a moderate liberal policy in economy. Conveying the image of a quiet conservative, he did not question the wealth tax (reestablished by the Socialists in 1988). Despite corruption affairs affecting some of his ministers, who he forced to resign (thus lending his name to the so-called "Balladur jurisprudence"), he became very popular and had the support of influential media. A majority of right-wing politicians advised him to run for the 1995 presidency, despite his promise not to campaign against Jacques Chirac.

When he announced his candidacy, four months before the election, he was considered the favourite. In the polls, he led Chirac by almost 20 points. From the position of an outsider, Chirac criticized Balladur as representing "dominant ideas" and the difference between the two decreased quickly. Left behind by the Socialist Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac, Balladur obtained 18.5% and was eliminated in the first round. Despite Chirac declaring that they had been "friends for 30 years", the episode greatly strained their relationship. The Balladuriens, i.e. Balladur's followers, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, were ostracized from the new Chirac administration.

Then he failed in turn to win the elections for the presidency of the Ile de France region in 1998, the RPR nomination for the mayoralty of Paris in 2001, and the Chair of the National Assembly in 2002. He presided over the National Assembly's foreign affairs committee during his last parliamentary term (2002-2007). Since the 1980s, he advocated the unification of the right-wing groupings in a great party. Chirac realized this with the creation of the Union for a Popular Movement in 2002.

In 2007, when Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President of France, he nominated him to the head of a committee for institutional reforms. The constitutional revision was approved by the Parliament in July 2008.

From 1968 to 1980, he was president of the French company of the Mont Blanc Tunnel, while occupying various other positions in ministerial staff. Following the 1999 deadly accident in the tunnel, he gave evidence to the court judging the case in 2005, about the security measures he had or had not taken. Balladur claimed that he always took security seriously, but that it was difficult to agree on anything with the Italian company operating the Italian part of the tunnel. From 1977 to 1986, he was president of Générale de Service Informatique (later merged into IBM Global Services), making him one of the few French politicians with business experience.

Édouard Balladur is often caricatured as aloof, aristocratic and arrogant in media such as the Canard Enchaîné weekly or the Les Guignols de l'info TV show.

In 2006 he announced that he would not run again for re-election in 2007 as a member of Parliament for the 15th arrondissement of Paris, a conservative stronghold.

In 2008, Balladur visited the United States to speak at an event organized by the Streit Council for a Union of Democracies, Washington-based think-tank. Balladur presented his latest book, in which he outlined a concept for a "Union of the West."[1]

Balladur is Roman Catholic.

Governmental functions :

Prime minister : 1993-1995

Minister of State, minister of Economy and Finances : 1986-1988

Electoral mandates

Member of the National Assembly of France for Paris : Elected in march 1986 (Became minister in march 1986) / 1988-1993 (Became Prime minister in 1993) / 1995-2007

Municipal councillor of Paris : 1989-2008

Rwanda Genocide

On 5 August 2008, the government of Rwanda issued a report accusing Édouard Balladur of involvement in the 1994 Rwanda genocide that killed 800,000 people. He and other French officials were accused in the report of giving political, military, diplomatic and logistical support during the genocide to Rwanda’s extremist government and the Hutu forces that slaughtered minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.[2]

Balladur's Cabinet

(29 March 1993 – 10 May 1995)

Changes

  • 19 July 1994 – Minister of Communication Alain Carignon leaves the Cabinet and the Ministry is abolished.
  • 17 October 1994 – José Rossi succeeds Longuet as Minister of Industry, Foreign Trade, Posts, and Telecommunications.
  • 12 November 1994 – Bernard Debré succeeds Roussin as Minister of Cooperation

Bibliography

  • For a Union of the West, 2009, Hoover Institution Press, ISBN 978-0-8179-4932-7.

References

  1. ^ http://streitcouncil.org/content/activities/events/balladur_08/balladur_bio.htm
  2. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7542418.stm
Political offices
Preceded by Minister of the Economy, Finance, and Privatization
1986–1988 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Prime Minister of France
1993–1995 		Succeeded by
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