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Jacques René Chirac (UK: / ˈ ʃ ɪər æ k /, [1] [2] US: / ʒ ɑː k ʃ ɪəˈr ɑː k / ⓘ; [2] [3] [4] French: [ʒak ʁəne ʃiʁak] ⓘ; 29 November 1932 – 26 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France [5] from 1995 to 2007.
- Overview
- Education and early career
- Rise to national prominence
- First term
- Second term
- Corruption charges
Jacques Chirac (born November 29, 1932, Paris, France—died September 26, 2019, Paris) French politician, who served as the country’s president (1995–2007) and prime minister (1974–76, 1986–88).
Chirac, the son of a bank employee, graduated from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris in 1954, served as an officer in the French army in Algeria (1956–57), and earned a graduate degree from the École Nationale d’Administration in 1959. He then became a civil servant and rose rapidly through the ranks, serving as a department head and a secr...
After serving as minister for agriculture (1972–74) and of the interior (1974), Chirac was appointed prime minister by newly elected President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1974. Citing personal and professional differences with Giscard, Chirac resigned from that office in 1976 and set about reconstituting the Gaullist Union of Democrats for the Republic into a neo-Gaullist group, the Rally for the Republic (RPR). With the party firmly under his control, he was elected mayor of Paris in 1977 and continued to build his political base among the several conservative parties of France.
Chirac’s first campaign for the presidency in 1981 split the conservative vote with Giscard and thereby allowed the Socialist Party candidate, François Mitterrand, to win. In parliamentary elections held in 1986, the coalition of right-wing parties won a slim majority of seats in the National Assembly, and Chirac was appointed prime minister by Mitterrand. This power-sharing arrangement between the two posts was the first of its kind in the history of the Fifth Republic, in which previously the president and the prime minister had always belonged to the same party or the same electoral coalition.
As president, Chirac tried to cut spending and thereby reduce the government’s budget deficits so that France could qualify to participate in a single common European currency, the euro, which replaced the franc as France’s sole currency in 2002. His proposed austerity measures, which included freezing the wages of public-sector employees and reducing some social welfare programs, provoked a massive general strike in late 1995. Nonetheless, Chirac continued to pursue policies of fiscal austerity despite unemployment that had reached record levels by early 1997. Hoping to win a mandate for his program, Chirac called for parliamentary elections in May 1997, but voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for the left. His conservative coalition lost its majority in the parliament, and the Socialists were able to form a new coalition government with their leader, Jospin, as prime minister. Chirac also drew protests after authorizing nuclear tests in the South Pacific in 1995 and 1996.
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In 2002 Chirac’s party, the RPR, merged with part of the Union for the French Democracy and the Liberal Democratic party to create the Union for the Presidential Majority (later renamed the Union for a Popular Movement; UMP). In the spring of the same year—despite criticism for various ethical lapses and accusations of illegal fund-raising levied against the RPR—Chirac won the first round of France’s presidential balloting over right-wing nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jospin, whose third-place showing eliminated him from the second round. With near-universal support from the political establishment in the second round, including from the French Communist Party and Jospin’s Socialist Party, Chirac was easily reelected president, winning 82 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s 18 percent—the largest margin of victory in any French presidential election.
Chirac’s second term, which officially began in May 2002, would be shorter than his first; in 2000 French voters had passed a referendum to change the presidential term of office from seven to five years. The term opened positively for Chirac: the UMP’s victory in the June 2002 legislative elections ended the president’s cohabitation with the Socialist prime minister. Chirac appointed fellow centre-right politician Jean-Pierre Raffarin to the post.
The early part of the term was dominated by U.S.- and British-led efforts to secure United Nations support for a military invasion of Iraq, whose government, led by Ṣaddām Ḥussein, they accused of possessing or attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. In November 2002 France backed a U.S.-sponsored resolution mandating the return to Iraq of weapons inspectors, who had been withdrawn in 1998. In early 2003, as the United States accused Iraq of failing to adequately cooperate with the inspectors, Chirac declared that France would veto any new Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. With German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chirac proposed a plan to toughen and extend the inspections regime, but the United States rejected it as unlikely to succeed. Despite this and later efforts by Chirac to prevent a war with Iraq, a U.S.-led coalition attacked the country in March 2003. Chirac’s leadership among Europeans opposed to the war created considerable enmity toward him in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.
During Chirac’s presidency, a number of his political associates were tried on charges of corruption. Notably, in 2004 his former prime minister Alain Juppé was convicted of misappropriating public funds. Chirac, too, was allegedly involved in corrupt political dealings, but he remained immune from prosecution until his term as president ended. In ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sep 26, 2019 · Jacques René Chirac was born in 1932, the son of a bank manager who later became the managing director of the Dassault aircraft company. Educated at the elite Ecole Nationale...
Sep 26, 2019 · Jacques Chirac, the former French president who championed the European Union, but whose later years were blighted by corruption scandals, has died aged 86.
Sep 26, 2019 · Jacques Chirac, who molded the legacy of Charles de Gaulle into a personal power base that made him one of the dominant leaders of France across three decades and a vocal advocate of European...
Mar 7, 2011 · Jacques Chirac - one of France's most senior figures whose political career spanned several decades - has been found guilty of corruption dating back to his time as mayor of Paris.
Jacques Chirac (1932-2019) was President of the French Republic from 1995 to 2007. He was the fifth President of the Fifth Republic.
