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François Hollande

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François Hollande
Hollande campaigning for the 2012 presidential election
President of the General Council of Corrèze
Incumbent
Assumed office
20 March 2008
Preceded byJean-Pierre Dupont
First Secretary of the Socialist Party
In office
27 November 1997 – 27 November 2008
Preceded byLionel Jospin
Succeeded byMartine Aubry
Mayor of Tulle
In office
17 March 2001 – 17 March 2008
Preceded byRaymond-Max Aubert
Succeeded byBernard Combes
Deputy of the National Assembly
for Corrèze's 1st Constituency
Incumbent
Assumed office
12 June 1997
Preceded byRaymond-Max Aubert
In office
12 June 1988 – 16 May 1993
Preceded byProportional representation
Succeeded byRaymond-Max Aubert
Personal details
Born (1954-08-12) 12 August 1954 (age 70)
Rouen, France
Political partySocialist Party
Domestic partner(s)Ségolène Royal (1973–2007)
Valérie Trierweiler (2007–present)
ChildrenThomas
Clémence
Julien
Flora
Alma materHEC Paris
ENA Strasbourg
Institute of Political Studies

François Gérard Georges Hollande (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ɔlɑ̃d]; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who was the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008. He has also been a Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze's 1st Constituency since 1997, and previously represented that seat from 1988 to 1993. He was the Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008, and has been the President of the General Council of Corrèze since 2008.

On 16 October 2011, Hollande was nominated to be the Socialist and Left Radical Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election. His main opponent is President Nicolas Sarkozy.[1]

His surname means Holland.

Early life and background

Hollande was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy to a middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert, was a social worker (1927-2009), and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor, who "had once run for the extreme right in local politics".[2][3][4][5][6] The surname "Hollande" is "believed to come from Calvinist ancestors who escaped Holland (the Netherlands) in the 16th century and took the name of their old country."[7]

Education

He attended Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle boarding school, then HEC Paris, École nationale d'administration, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. He graduated from ENA in 1980.[8][9] He lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 while he was a university student.[10] Immediately after graduating, he was employed to work as a councillor in the Court of Audit.

Political career

After volunteering to work for François Mitterrand's ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election when he was a student, 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 Corrèze 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, although 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 Corrèze 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 amount of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.

First Secretary of the Socialist Party

Hollande with Ségolène Royal at a rally for the 2007 elections

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 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 Corrèze 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 to succeed him 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 time, 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, Ségolène 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 Delanoe, 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 Corrèze in April 2008, a position he holds to this day. In 2008 he supported the creation of the first European Prize for Local History (Etienne Baluze Prize), founded by the "Société des Amis du musée du cloître" of Tulle, on the suggestion of the French historian Jean Boutier. François Hollande awarded the first prize on 29 February 2008 to the Italian historian Beatrice Palmero in the General Council of Corrèze.

Presidential campaign

File:François Hollande - Rennes, avril 2012.jpeg
Hollande campaigning for the 2012 presidential election
Main article: François Hollande presidential campaign, 2012

Following his re-election as President of the General Council of Corrèze 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.[11] 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 IMF 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, which Hollande won with 56% of the vote to Aubry's 43%, after which Hollande was declared the official Socialist and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election.[12] 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 Ségolène Royal.[13]

Hollande's presidential campaign is being managed by Pierre Moscovici and Stéphane Le Foll, a Member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament respectively.[14] Hollande launched his campaign officially with a rally and major speech at Le Bourget on 22 January 2012 in front of 25,000 people.[15][16] 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.[16]

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.[17][18] On 9 February, he detailed his policies specifically relating to education in a major speech in Orléans.[19]

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.[20]

In his first overseas trip for his campaign, he visited Berlin, Germany in December 2011 for the Social Democrats Federal Party Congress, at which he met Sigmar Gabriel, Peer Steinbrueck, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Martin Schulz[21][22]; 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.[23][24]

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.[25]

The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April. François Hollande came in first place with 28.63% of the vote, and will face Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round run-off.[26]

Policies

Personal life

For over thirty years, his partner was fellow Socialist politician Ségolène Royal, with whom he has four children – Thomas (1984), Clémence (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.[34]

A few months after his split from Ségolène Royal was announced, a French website published details of a relationship between Hollande and French journalist Valérie Trierweiler. This was controversial as some considered this to be a breach of France's strict stance on the privacy of politicians' personal affairs. In November 2007, Valérie Trierweiler confirmed and openly discussed her relationship with Hollande in an interview with French weekly Télé 7 Jours.

Works

Hollande has had a large number of books and academic works published, including:

  • "L'Heure des choix. Pour une économie politique", with Pierre Moscovici, 1991. ISBN 2738101461
  • "L'Idée socialiste aujourd'hui", Omnibus, 2001. ISBN 978-2259195843
  • "Devoirs de vérité", interviews with Edwy Plenel, éd. Stock, 2007. ISBN 978-2234059344
  • "Droit d'inventaires", interviews with Pierre Favier, Le Seuil, 2009. ISBN 978-2020979139
  • "Le rêve français" (The French Dream), Privat, August 2011. ISBN 978-2708944411
  • "Un destin pour la France" (A Destiny for France), Fayard, January 2012. ISBN 978-2213662831
  • "Changer de destin", Robert Laffont, February 2012. ISBN 978-2221131176

References

  1. ^ "Socialists choose Hollande to face Sarkozy in 2012". FRANCE 24. Retrieved 3 January 2012.
  2. ^ Francois Hollande stages first major rally in 2012 French presidential race | World news | guardian.co.uk
  3. ^ Willsher, Kim (16 October 2011). "French presidential election: Nicolas Sarkozy v François Hollande". The Guardian. London.
  4. ^ "EN IMAGES. François Hollande, une carrière au parti socialiste – Presidentielle 2012" (in French). leParisien.fr. Retrieved 3 January 2012.
  5. ^ We all know Sarko, but who's the other guy? - The Irish Times - Sat, Apr 21, 2012
  6. ^ New Statesman - The NS Profile: François Hollande
  7. ^ François Hollande: from marshmallow man to Sarkozy's nemesis? | World news | The Guardian
  8. ^ The French elite: Old school ties | The Economist
  9. ^ "HEC Paris – Grande Ecole – Foire aux questions" (in Template:Fr icon). Hec.fr. Retrieved 3 January 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  10. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/the-soft-middle-of-francois-hollande.html
  11. ^ Albinet, Alain (31 March 2011). "L'appel de Tulle de François Hollande". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 29 June 2011. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |newspaper= (help)
  12. ^ Erlanger, Steven (7 September 2010). "French Unions in National Strike on Pensions". New York Times. p. A4. Retrieved 4 December 2010. [Socialist party leader Martine] Aubry has presidential ambitions... Her rivals included the former leader of the party, François Hollande....
  13. ^ Love, Brian (16 September 2011). "Hollande to run for presidency for French left". Reuters. Retrieved 16 October 2011.
  14. ^ Template:FrBotella, Bruno. "François Hollande recrute deux préfets pour sa campagne". acteurs publics. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  15. ^ Erlanger, Steven (January 22, 2012). "François Hollande, Challenging Sarkozy, Calls for Change". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  16. ^ a b Clavel, Geoffroy (January 22, 2012). "François Hollande, French Presidential Candidate, Says 'Finance' Is His Adversary". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  17. ^ Erlanger, Steven (January 26, 2012). "Sarkozy's Main Rival Offers Proposals for Lifting France's Economy". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  18. ^ "Presidential program – François Hollande". Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  19. ^ Laubacher, Paul. "Éducation : François Hollande fait de l'école primaire une priorité". Le Nouvel Observateur (in French). Retrieved 18 February 2012. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |année= ignored (|date= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ "Politique : Sarkozy se voit à l'Élysée pour encore "sept ans et demi"". Le Figaro. Retrieved 2012-04-14.
  21. ^ „Gemeinsam eine Menge bewegen“ | Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD)
  22. ^ Roll over, Merkozy: François Hollande finds a German ally of his own | World news | guardian.co.uk
  23. ^ François Hollande en visite en Tunisie - France / Tunisie - RFI
  24. ^ Cheer for François Hollande in France. But he won't change Europe | Martin Kettle | Comment is free | The Guardian
  25. ^ "4 March 2012 – Opinion Way" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-04-19.
  26. ^ Elections Présidentielle Résultats - FRANCE 24
  27. ^ Socialist Hollande Pledges Tax Breaks End, Eased Pension Measure
  28. ^ a b François Hollande: Towards a European 'New Deal'? | EurActiv
  29. ^ Unpopular French President Nicolas Sarkozy Desperately Woos Les Gais
  30. ^ François Hollande outlines manifesto for French presidency challenge - Telegraph
  31. ^ "2% de croissance": Hollande s'explique
  32. ^ Occitan Nation Party - Press release : Presidential election - occitan
  33. ^ September 14-15, 2011: French presidency candidate François Hollande on regional languages « Sorosoro
  34. ^ Sciolino, Elaine (19 June 2007). "French Socialists' First Couple Disclose a Parting of Ways". New York Times. p. A3. Retrieved 4 December 2010.

Further reading

Party political offices
Preceded by First Secretary of the Socialist Party
1997–2008 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Socialist Party nominee for President of France
2012 		Most recent
Radical Party of the Left nominee for President of France
2012
Political offices
Preceded by Mayor of Tulle
2001–2008 		Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the General Council of Corrèze
2008–present 		Incumbent

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