Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa, popularly known as Nicolas
Sarkozy, born on January 28, 1955 in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, is the
current President of France and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, elected on 6
May 2007 after defeating Socialist Party contender Ségolène Royal
during the second round of the 2007 election. Before his presidency, he was leader
of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) right wing party. Under Jacques Chirac's
presidency, he served as the Minister of the Interior in Jean-Pierre Raffarin
(UMP)'s first two governments (from May 2002 to March 2004), then was appointed
Minister of Finances in Raffarin's last government (March 2004 May 2005), and
again Minister of the Interior in Dominique de Villepin's government (2005-2007).
Nicolas Sarkozy was also president of the General council of the Hauts-de-Seine
department from 2004 to 2007 and mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest
communes of France from 1983 to 2002. Furthermore, he was also Minister of the
Budget in Édouard Balladur (RPR, predecessor of the UMP)'s government during
François Mitterrand's last term.
Nicolas Sarkozy is known for his strong stance on law and order issues and
his desire to revitalise the French economy. In foreign affairs, he has promised
closer cooperation with the United States. His nickname "Sarko" is
used by both supporters and opponents.
Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian immigrant father, Pál Sárközy
de Nagy-Bócsa (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál;
some sources spell it Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál; Hungarian
pronunciation and a mother of French Catholic and Greek Jewish descent, Andrée
Mallah. His Greek-born grandfather, Benico Mallah (former Aaron Mallah), was
a physician from Thessaloniki. Benico, who left for France to become a doctor,
was the son of Mordechai Mallah, one of the eight sons of Aaron Mallah, founder
of the Rabbinical School of Thessaloniki.
Pál Sárközy was born in 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging
to the lower nobility of Hungary. The family possessed lands and a small castle
in the village of Alattyán, near Szolnok, 92 km (57 miles) east of Budapest.
Pál Sárközy's father and grandfather held elective offices
in the town of Szolnok. Although the Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa
(nagybócsai Sárközy) family was Protestant, Pál Sárközy's
mother, Katalin Tóth de Csáford (Hungarian: csáfordi Tóth
Katalin), grandmother of Nicolas Sarkozy, was from a Catholic aristocratic family.
As the Red Army entered Hungary in 1944, the Sárközy family fled
to Germany. They returned in 1945 but all their possessions had been seized.
Pál Sárközy's father died soon afterwards and his mother,
fearing that he would be drafted into the Hungarian People's Army or sent to
Siberia, urged him to leave the country and promised she would eventually follow
him and meet him in Paris. Pál Sárközy managed to flee to
Austria and then Germany while his mother reported to authorities that he had
drowned in Lake Balaton. Eventually, he arrived in Baden Baden, near the French
border, where the headquarters of the French Army in Germany were located, and
there he met a recruiter for the French Foreign Legion. He signed up for five
years, and was sent for training to Sidi Bel Abbes, in French Algeria, where
the French Foreign Legion's headquarters were located. He was due to be sent
to Indochina at the end of training, but the doctor who checked him before departure,
who happened to also be Hungarian, sympathised with him and gave him a medical
discharge to save him from possible death at the hands of the Vietminh. He returned
to civilian life in Marseille in 1948 and, although he asked for French citizenship
only in the 1970s (his legal status was that of a stateless person until then),
he nonetheless gallicised his Hungarian name into "Paul Sarközy de
Nagy-Bocsa". He met Andrée Mallah, Nicolas Sarkozy's mother (known
as Dadu), in 1949.
Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benedict Mallah,
a wealthy urologist and STD specialist with a well-established reputation in
the mainly bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benedict Mallah, originally
called Aaron Mallah and nicknamed Benico, was born in 1890 in the Sephardic
Jewish community of Salonica (Thessaloniki), Ottoman Empire. Resettled in Provence,
southern France, the family had moved to Salonica a century later. Benico Mallah,
the son of a jeweller, left Salonica, then part of the Ottoman Empire, with
his mother in 1904 at the age of 14 to attend the prestigious Lycée Lakanal
boarding school of Sceaux, in the southern suburbs of Paris. He studied medicine
after his baccalaureate and decided to stay in France and become a French citizen.
A doctor in the French Army during World War I, he met a recent war widow, Adèle
Bouvier (1891–1956), from a bourgeois family of Lyon, whom he married
in 1917. Adèle Bouvier, Nicolas Sarkozy's grandmother, was a Catholic
like the majority of French people. Mallah, for whom religion had reportedly
never been a central issue, converted to Catholicism upon marrying Adèle
Bouvier, which had been requested by Adèle's parents, and changed his
name to Benedict. Although Benedict Mallah converted to Catholicism, he and
his family nonetheless had to flee Paris and take refuge in a small farm in
Corrèze during World War II to avoid being arrested and delivered to
the Germans. During the Holocaust, many of the Mallahs who stayed in Salonica
or moved to France were deported to concentration and extermination camps. In
total, 57 family members were murdered by the Nazis.
Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement in
Paris and had three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in
the textile industry, Nicolas, born in 1955 and François, born in 1957
(an MBA and manager of a healthcare consultancy company). In 1959 Paul Sarkozy
left his wife and his three children. He later remarried twice and had two more
children with his second wife.
During Nicolas Sarkozy's childhood, his father refused to give his former wife's
family any financial help, even though he had founded his own advertising agency
and had become wealthy. The family lived in a small mansion owned by Nicolas Sarkozy's
grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement. The family later moved
to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France
région immediately west of the 17th Arrondissement just outside of Paris.
According to Nicolas Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an
influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. Sarkozy was, accordingly,
raised in the Catholic faith of his household. Nicolas Sarkozy, like his brothers,
is a baptised and professing Catholic. Sarkozy also said recently that one of
his role models was the late pope John Paul II.
Nicolas Sarkozy's father Paul did not teach him or his brothers Hungarian.
There is no evidence suggesting that there was an attempt to educate the Sarkozy
siblings about their paternal ethnic background.
Nicolas Sarkozy has said that having been abandoned by his father shaped much
of who he is today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation
to his wealthy classmates. He suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness
of 1.65 m, 5 feet 5 inches, or his family's lack of money, at least relatively
to their 17th Arrondissement or Neuilly neighbours), and is said to have harboured
a considerable amount of resentment against his absent father. "What made
me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood",
he said later.
Nicolas Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a state-funded (public)
middle and high school in Paris's 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième.
His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic
school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre pupil,
but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973. He enrolled
at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he read law and graduated with
a DEA degree in Business law. Paris X Nanterre had been the starting place for
the May '68 student movement and was still a stronghold of leftist students.
Described as a quiet student, Nicolas Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing student
organisation where he was very active. After graduating, he entered the Institut
d'Études Politiques de Paris (1979-1981) but failed to graduate due to
an insufficient command of the English language. After passing the bar, he became
a lawyer specializing in business law and family law.
Sakozy wed his first wife Marie-Dominique Culioli on 23 September 1982; her
father was a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They
had two sons, Pierre (born in 1985) and Jean (born in 1987). Nicolas Sarkozy's
marriage witness was the prominent right wing politician Charles Pasqua, later
to become a political opponent. Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they
had already been separated for several years.
As mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Nicolas Sarkozy met former fashion model and
public relations executive Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz (great-granddaughter
of composer Isaac Albéniz and of a Russian father), when he officiated
at her wedding to television host Jacques Martin. In 1988, she left her husband
for Sarkozy, and divorced Martin one year later. Nicolas Sarkozy married her
in October 1996, with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault. They have
one son, Louis, born 23 April 1997.
Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions,
with Cécilia Sarkozy acting as the chief aide for her husband. On 25
May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that she had left Nicolas
Sarkozy for French-Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New
York. There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin, which lead
to Sarkozy suing the paper. In the meantime, he was said to have had an affair
with a journalist of Le Figaro, Anne Fulda.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Cécilia ultimately divorced in October 15, 2007.
The French weekly magazine L'Express published photos of Sarkozy in Disneyland
Paris with singer and ex-model Carla Bruni in December of 2007, sparking international
attention. The couple were later spotted spending Christmas holidays together
in Egypt. Two months later, the mayor of the 8th district of Paris announced
that he had officiated over their marriage.
Nicolas Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of €2
million, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies. As
the French President, he earns a yearly salary of € 101,000 and is entitled
to a mayoral pension because he was mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine until 2002. He
also receives a yearly council pension, because he has been previously a member
of the council of the Hauts-de-Seine department. Nicolas Sarkozy's salary will
more than double to € 240,000 as a result of an amendment to the 2008 budget.
Nicolas Sarkozy is generally recognised by the right and left as a highly skilled
politician and striking orator. His supporters within France emphasise his charisma,
political innovation and willingness to "make a dramatic break" amidst
mounting disaffection against "politics as usual"; some see him as
wanting to depart from traditional French social and economic principles in
favour of American-style economic reform. Overall, he is generally considered
to be somewhat more pro-U.S. and pro-Israeli than most French politicians.
Since November 2004, Nicolas Sarkozy has been president of the Union pour un
Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France's major right political party, and he was
Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin, with the
honorific title of Minister of State, making him effectively the number three
man in the French State after President Jacques Chirac and the prime minister.
His ministerial responsibilities included law enforcement and working to co-ordinate
relationships between the national and local governments, as well as Minister
of Worship (in this guise he created the CFCM, French Council of Muslim Faith).
Previously, he was a deputy to the French National Assembly. He was forced to
resign this position in order to accept his ministerial appointment. He previously
also held several ministerial posts, including Finance Minister.
Nicolas Sarkozy's political career began at the age of 22, when he became a city
councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy and exclusive western suburb of Paris
(in the Hauts-de-Seine département). A member of the Neo-Gaullist party
RPR, he went on to be elected mayor of that town, after the death of the incumbent
mayor Achille Peretti. Sarkozy had been close to Peretti, as his mother was Peretti's
secretary. The senior RPR politician in the time, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become
mayor, and asked Sarkozy to organise his campaign. Instead Nicolas Sarkozy profited
from a short illness of Pasqua to propel himself into the office of mayor. He
was the youngest ever mayor of any town in France with a population of over 50,000.
He served from 1983 to 2002. In 1988, he became a deputy in the National Assembly.
In 1993, Nicolas Sarkozy was in the national news for personally negotiating
with the “Human Bomb”, a man who had taken small children hostage
in a kindergarten in Neuilly.Nicolas Sarkozy: A Who2 Profile. Retrieved on 2008-01-08.
The “Human Bomb” was killed after two days of talks by policemen
of the RAID, who entered the school stealthily while the attacker was resting.
From 1993 to 1995, he was Minister for the Budget and spokesman for the executive
in the cabinet of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. Throughout most of
his early career, Sarkozy had been seen as a protégé of Jacques
Chirac. During his tenure, he increased France's public debt more than any other
French Budget Minister except his predecessor, by the equivalent of €200
billion ($260 billion) (FY 1994-1996). The first two budgets he submitted to
the parliament (budgets for FY1994 and FY1995) assumed a yearly budget deficit
equivalent to 6% of GDP. According to the Maastricht Treaty, the French yearly
budget deficit may not be bigger than 3% of France's GDP.
In 1995, he spurned Chirac and backed Balladur for President of France. After
Chirac won the election, Nicolas Sarkozy lost his position as Minister for the
Budget and found himself outside the circles of power.
However, he came back after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary
election, as number 2 in the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin
resigned, in 1999, he took the leadership of the Neo-Gaullist party. But it
obtained its worst result at the 1999 European Parliament election, winning
12.7% of the votes, less than the dissident Rally for France of Charles Pasqua.
Nicolas Sarkozy lost the RPR leadership.
In 2002, however, after his re-election as President of the French Republic (see
French presidential election, 2002), Chirac appointed Nicolas Sarkozy as French
Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin,
despite Nicolas Sarkozy's support of Edouard Balladur for French President in
1995. Following Jacques Chirac's 14 July keynote speech on road safety Sarkozy
as interior minister pushed through new legislation leading to the mass purchase
of speed cameras and a campaign to increase the awareness of dangers on the roads.
In the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Nicolas Sarkozy became Finance Minister.
Tensions continued to build between Sarkozy and Chirac and within the UMP party,
as Sarkozy's intentions of becoming head of the party after the resignation
of Alain Juppé became clear. It became increasingly apparent that Nicolas
Sarkozy would go on to seek the presidency in 2007; in an often-repeated comment
made on television channel France 2, when asked by a journalist whether he thought
about the presidential election when he shaved in the morning, Nicolas Sarkozy
commented, “not just when I shave”.
In party elections of November 2004, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with
85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned as
Finance Minister. Nicolas Sarkozy's ascent was marked by the division of UMP
between sarkozystes, such as Sarkozy's “first lieutenant”, Brice
Hortefeux, and Chirac loyalists, such as Jean-Louis Debré.
Nicolas Sarkozy was made Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion
of Honour) by President Chirac in February 2005. He was re-elected on 13 March
2005 to the National Assembly (as required by the constitution, he had had to
resign as a deputy when he had become minister in 2002).
On 31 May 2005 the main French news radio station France Info reported a rumour
that Sarkozy was to be reappointed Minister of the Interior in the government
of Dominique de Villepin without resigning from the UMP leadership. This was
confirmed on 2 June 2005, when the members of the government were officially
announced.
Towards the end of his first term as Minister of the Interior, in 2004, Nicolas
Sarkozy was the most popular and also the most unpopular conservative politician
in France, according to polls conducted at the beginning of 2004. His “tough
on crime” policies, which included increasing the police presence on the
streets and introducing monthly crime performance ratings, were popular with many
and unpopular for many others.
Nicolas Sarkozy has sought to ease the sometimes tense relationships between
the general French population and the Muslim community. Unlike the Catholic
Church in France with their official leaders or Protestants with their umbrella
organisations, the French Muslim community had a lack of structure with no group
that could legitimately deal with the French government on their behalf. Sarkozy
felt that the foundation of such an organisation was desirable. He supported
the foundation in May 2003 of the private non-profit Conseil français
du culte musulman (“French Council of the Muslim Faith”), an organisation
meant to be representative of French Muslims. In addition, Nicolas Sarkozy has
suggested amending the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, mostly
in order to be able to finance mosques and other Muslim institutions with public
funds so that they are less reliant on money from outside of France.
During his short appointment as Minister of Finance, Sarkozy was responsible for
introducing a number of policies. The degree to which this reflected libéralisme
(a hands-off approach to running the economy) or more traditional French state
dirigisme (intervention) is controversial. He resigned the day following his election
as president of the UMP.
* In September 2004, Nicolas Sarkozy oversaw the reduction of the government
ownership stake in France Télécom from 50.4% to 41%.
* Sarkozy backed a partial nationalisation of the engineering company Alstom
decided by his predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003.
* Nicolas Sarkozy reached in June an agreement with the major retail chains
in France to concertedly lower prices on household goods by an average of 2%;
the success of this measure is disputed, with studies suggesting that the decrease
was close to 1% in September.
* Taxes: Sarkozy avoided taking a position on the ISF (solidarity tax on wealth).
This is considered an ideological symbol by many on the Left and Right. Some
in the business world and on the Liberal Right, such as Alain Madelin, wanted
it abolished. For Sarkozy, that would have risked being categorised by the Left
as a gift to the richest classes of society at a time of economic difficulties.
During his second term at the Ministry of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy was initially
more discreet about his ministerial activities: instead of focusing on his own
topic of law and order, many of his declarations addressed wider issues, since
he was expressing his opinions as head of the UMP party.
Main article: Response to the 2005 civil unrest in France
However, the civil unrest in autumn 2005 put law enforcement in the spotlight
again. Nicolas Sarkozy was accused of having provoked the unrest by calling
young delinquents from housing projects "rabble" ("racaille")
in Argenteuil near Paris. After the accidental death of two youths, which sparked
the riots, Sarkozy first blamed it on "hoodlums" and gangsters. These
remarks were sharply criticised by many on the left wing and by a member of
his own government, Delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities Azouz Begag.
After the rioting, he made a number of announcements on future policy: selection
of immigrants, greater tracking of immigrants, and a reform on the 1945 ordinance
government justice measures for young delinquents.
Before he was elected French President, Nicolas Sarkozy was president of UMP,
the French conservative party, elected with 85% of the vote. During his presidency,
the number of members has significantly increased. In 2005, he supported a "yes"
vote in the French referendum on the European Constitution but the "No"
vote won.
Throughout 2005, Sarkozy became increasingly vocal in calling for radical changes
in France's economic and social policies. These calls culminated in an interview
with Le Monde on 8 September 2005, during which he claimed that the French had
been misled for 30 years by false promises, and denounced what he considers
to be unrealistic policies. Among other issues:
* he called for a simplified and “fairer” taxation system, with
fewer loopholes and a maximum taxation rate (all direct taxes combined) at 50%
of revenue;
* he approved measures reducing or denying social support to unemployed workers
who refuse work offered to them;
* he pressed for a reduction in the budget deficit, claiming that the French
state has been living off credit for some time.
Such policies are what are called in France libéral (that is, in favour
of laissez-faire economic policies, although this judgment is made by French
standards) or, with a pejorative undertone, ultra-libéral. Nicolas Sarkozy
rejects this label of libéral and prefers to call himself a pragmatist
instead. Besides his dirigisme on economical subjects is far from laissez-faire
politics.
Sarkozy opened another avenue of controversy by declaring that he wanted a
reform of the immigration system, with quotas designed to admit the skilled
workers needed by the French economy. He also wants to reform the current French
system for foreign students, saying that it enables foreign students to take
open-ended curricula in order to obtain residency in France; instead, he wants
to select the best students to the best curricula in France.
In early 2006, the French parliament adopted a controversial bill known as
DADVSI, which reforms French copyright law. Since his party was divided on the
issue, Sarkozy stepped in and organised meetings between various parties involved.
Later, groups such as the Odebi League and EUCD.info alleged that Nicolas Sarkozy
personally and unofficially supported certain amendments to the law, which enacted
strong penalties against designers of peer-to-peer systems.
On 14 January 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was chosen by the UMP to be its candidate
in the 2007 presidential election. Sarkozy, who was running unopposed, won 98%
of the votes. Of the 327,000 UMP members who could vote, 69% participated in the
online ballot.
In February 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy appeared on a televised debate on TF1 where
he expressed his support for affirmative action for minorities and the freedom
to work overtime. Despite his opposition to same-sex marriage, he advocated
civil unions and the possibility for same-sex partners to inherit under the
same regime as married couples. The law has been voted in July 2007.
On 7 February, Nicolas Sarkozy decided in favour of a projected second, non-nuclear,
aircraft carrier for the national Navy (adding to the nuclear Charles de Gaulle),
during an official visit in Toulon with Defence Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie.
"This would allow permanently having an operational ship, taking into account
the constraints of maintenance", he explained.
On 21 March, President Jacques Chirac announced his support for Sarkozy, adding
that he had his vote. Chirac pointed out that Sarkozy had been chosen as presidential
candidate for the ruling UMP party, and said: "So it is totally natural
that I give him my vote and my support." To focus on his campaign, Sarkozy
stepped down as interior minister on 26 March.
During the campaign, rival candidates had accused Nicolas Sarkozy of being
a "candidate for brutality" and of presenting overly hardline views
about France's future. He was also criticised by opponents for allegedly courting
conservative voters in policy-making in a bid to capitalise on right-wing sentiments
among some communities. However, his popularity was sufficient to see him polling
as the frontrunner throughout the later campaign period, consistently ahead
of rival Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal.
The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April 2007. Nicolas
Sarkozy came in first with 31.18% of the votes, ahead of Ségolène
Royal of the Socialists with 25.87%. In the second round, Nicolas Sarkozy came
out on top to win the election with 53.06% of the votes ahead of Ségolène
Royal with 46.94%. In his speech immediately following the announcement of the
election results, Sarkozy stressed the need for France's modernisation, but
also called for national unity, mentioning that Royal was in his thoughts. In
that speech, he claimed “The French have chosen to break with the ideas,
habits and behaviour of the past. I will restore the value of work, authority,
merit and respect for the nation.”
On 16 May 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy became the sixth person elected President of the
French Fifth Republic (the seventh overall; Alain Poher served twice in an interim
role as President of the French Senate), and the 23rd president over all five
Republican governments in the history of France. He is the first French President
to have been born after World War II.
The official transfer of power from Jacques Chirac took place on 16 May at
11:00 am (9:00 UTC) at the Élysée Palace, where he was given the
authorization codes of the French nuclear arsenal and presented with the Grand
Master's Collar, symbol of his new function of Grand Master of the Legion of
Honour. At that point, he formally became president. Leyenda, by Spanish composer
Isaac Albéniz was played in honour of the president's wife, who is Albeniz's
great-granddaughter. Both Nicolas Sarkozy's mother Andrée, who sat on
a regal chair, and his formerly estranged father Pal—with whom Sarkozy
had reached a reconciliation—attended the ceremony, as did Nicolas Sarkozy's
children. The presidential motorcade, with the President on board the presidential
Peugeot 607 Paladine, then travelled from the Élysée to the Champs-Élysées
for a public ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. Then the new president went to
the Cascade du Bois de Boulogne of Paris for a homage to the French Resistance
and to the Communist resistant Guy Môquet — he proposed that all
high-school students read Guy Moquet's last letter to his parents, which was
criticised by a number of leftists as a cynical form of reappropriation of French
history by the right.
In the afternoon, the new President flew to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was replaced by François Fillon.
Sarkozy appointed Bernard Kouchner, the left-wing founder of Médecins
Sans Frontières, as his foreign minister, leading to Kouchner's expulsion
from the Socialist Party. In addition to Kouchner, three more Sarkozy ministers
are from the left, including Eric Besson, who served as Ségolène
Royal's economic adviser at the beginning of her campaign. Nicolas Sarkozy also
appointed seven women to form a total cabinet of 15; one, Justice Minister Rachida
Dati, is the first woman of Northern African origin to serve in a French cabinet.
Of the 15, two attended the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA). The
ministers were reorganised, with the controversial creation of a Ministry of
Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development — given
to his right-hand man Brice Hortefeux — and of a Ministry of Budget, Public
Accounts and Civil Administration — handed out to Éric Wœrth,
supposed to prepare the replacement of only a third of all civil servants who
retire. However, after the 17 June parliamentary elections, the Cabinet has
been adjusted to 15 ministers and 16 deputy ministers, totalling 31 officials.
Shortly after taking office, President Nicolas Sarkozy began negotiations with
Colombian president Álvaro Uribe and the left-wing guerrilla FARC, regarding
the release of hostages held by the rebel group, especially Franco-Colombian
politician Ingrid Betancourt. According to some sources, Sarkozy himself asked
for Uribe to release FARC's "chancellor" Rodrigo Granda. Furthermore,
he announced on 24 July, 2007, that French and European representatives had
obtained the extradition of the Bulgarian nurses detained in Lybia to their
country. In exchange, he signed with Gaddafi security, health care and immigration
pacts — and a $230 million (168 million euros) MILAN antitank missile
sale. The contract was the first made by Libya since 2004, and was negotiated
with MBDA, a subsidiary of EADS. Another 128 millions euros contract would have
been signed, according to Tripoli, with EADS for a TETRA radio system. The Socialist
Party (PS) and the Communist Party (PCF) criticised a "state affair"
and a "barter" with a "Rogue state". The leader of the PS,
François Hollande, requested the opening of a parliamentary investigation.
On 8 June 2007, during the 33rd G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Nicolas Sarkozy
set a goal of reducing French CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050 in order to prevent
global warming. He then pushed forward the important Socialist figure of Dominique
Strauss-Kahn as European nominee to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Critics
alleged that Sarkozy proposed to nominate Strauss-Kahn as managing director
of the IMF to deprive the Socialist Party of one of its more popular figures.
The UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy's party, won a majority at the June 2007 legislative
election, although by less than expected. In July, the UMP majority, seconded
by the Nouveau Centre, ratified one of Sarkozy's electoral promises, which was
to partially revoke the inheritance tax. The inheritance tax formerly brought
eight billion euros into state coffers.
After winning the election, Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP majority has reduced taxes,
in particular for upper middle-class people, allegedly in an effort to boost
GDP growth, but did not reduce state expenditures. He was criticised by the
European Commission for doing so. Furthermore, Sarkozy broke with the custom
of amnestying traffic tickets and of releasing thousands of prisoners from overcrowded
jails on Bastille Day, a tradition that Napoleon had started in 1802 to commemorate
the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution.
Nicolas Sarkozy then went on vacation to the United States, taking his family
to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. He stayed in the 11-bathroom shorefront
mansion of former Microsoft executive Michael Appe. He was brought there by
a commercial jet, however, after the death of Cardinal Lustiger, archbishop
of Paris, whose funeral he was to attend, one of his presidential planes flew
him on 10 August to Paris and then back to America. On 21 August he returned
to France by a commercial jet.
Sarkozy's government issued a decree on 7 August, 2007 to generalise a voluntary
biometric profiling program of travellers in airports. The program, called Parafes,
was to use fingerprints. The new database would be interconnected with the Schengen
Information System (SIS) as well as with a national database of wanted persons
(FPR). The CNIL protested against this new decree, opposing itself to the recording
of fingerprints and to the interconnection between the SIS and the FPR.
He was named the 68th best dressed person by the Vanity Fair magazine, alongside
David Beckham and Brad Pitt. Beside publicizing, at times, and at others, refusing
to publicise his ex-wife's image, Nicolas Sarkozy takes care of his own personal
image, sometimes to the point of censoring (such as in the Paris Match affair,
when he allegedly forced its director to resign following an article on Cécilia
and her affair with Publicis executive Richard Attias, or pressures exercised
on the Journal du dimanche, which was preparing to publish an article concerning
Cécilia's decision not to vote in the second round of the 2007 presidential
election. In its August 9, 2007 edition, Paris Match retouched a photo of Nicolas
Sarkozy in order to erase a love handle. His official portrait destined for all
French townhalls was done by SIPA photographer Philippe Warrin, better known for
his paparazzi work.
Former Daily Telegraph journalist Colin Randall has however highlighted Sarkozy's
tighter control of his image and frequents interventions in the media: "he
censors a book, or fires the chief editor of an hebdomary."
Nicolas Sarkozy, alongside Tony Blair, is part of the inspiration for Mathieu
Amalric's portrayal of Dominic Greene, the villain of the 22nd James Bond film,
Quantum of Solace.
Generally speaking, Sarkozy is a bête noire of the Left, and is also criticised
by some on the right, most vocally by the supporters of Jacques Chirac and Dominique
de Villepin, such as Jean-Louis Debré.
Critics have accused him of being an authoritarian demagogue, ready to trade
away civil liberties for political gains. He is also accused by the Left of
being a populist who favours far-right ideas.
In the midst of a tense period and following a shooting that killed an 11-year-old
boy in the banlieue of La Courneuve in June 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy quoted a local
resident and vowed to clean the area out “with a Kärcher” (nettoyer
la cité au Kärcher, Kärcher being a well-known German brand
of pressure cleaning equipment), and two days before the 2005 Paris riots he
referred to the youth of the housing projects as voyous (thugs) and racaille,
a slang term which can be translated into English as rabble, scum or riff-raff;
this was criticised as being inappropriate language.
As Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy has made bold statements following
heinous crimes reported in the media. As a consequence, he has been accused
in certain cases of failing to respect the separation of powers between the
executive and the judiciary by trying to apply pressure in certain cases. Most
famously, he was criticised, not only by the left-wing Syndicat de la magistrature
judges' union, but also by the centrist Union syndicale des magistrats for attacks
on the independence of the judiciary.
In September 2005 some youths were acquitted of an arson attack on a police
station in Pau for lack of proof and Nicolas Sarkozy was accused of having pushed
for a hasty inquiry—Sarkozy had vowed that the perpetrators would be arrested
within three months. On 22 June 2005, he announced to law enforcement officials
that he had questioned the Minister of Justice about the future of “the
judge” who had freed a man on parole, enabling him to commit a murder.
Nicolas Sarkozy has personal friendships with some of the most powerful figures
in the French business world; for example, Martin Bouygues (from the Bouygues
group, owner of the TF1 channel, as well as telecommunications and public works
companies) and Bernard Arnault (from LVMH) were his marriage witnesses. His
brother, Guillaume, is a senior executive of the MEDEF, the foremost business
union in France; in 2005, he renounced running for the top position of that
union because he said he did not want to hinder his brother's political career.
French presidents have long had links with the business sector, but Nicolas
Sarkozy's have been especially extensive, and especially publicly discussed.
His vacation on the yacht of a wealthy industrialist, immediately after his
election, drew particular comment, although Sarkozy was unapologetic.
In 2004, he published a book called La République, les religions, l'espérance
(“The Republic, Religions, and Hope”), in which he argued that the
young should not be brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also
advocated reducing the separation of church and state, arguing for the government
subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society.
He flatly opposes financing of religious institutions with funds from outside
France. After meeting with Tom Cruise, Nicolas Sarkozy was criticised by some
for meeting with a member of the Church of Scientology, which is classified
as a cult (secte translates "cult") in France (see Parliamentary Commission
on Cults in France).
Nicolas Sarkozy disapproved of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but was nonetheless
critical of the way Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin
expressed France's opposition to the war. Talking at the French-American Foundation
in Washington, D.C. on 12 September 2006, he denounced what he called the "French
arrogance" and said: "It is bad manners to embarrass one's allies
or sound like one is taking delight in their troubles." He also added:
"We must never again turn our disagreements into a crisis." Jacques
Chirac reportedly said in private that Nicolas Sarkozy's speech was "appalling"
and "a shameful act".
Even though his current foreign minister Bernard Kouchner (excluded from the
Socialist party after his inclusion in François Fillon's government)
had been one of the few supporters in France of removal of Saddam Hussein from
power, Sarkozy's stance on the war has not changed.
A few weeks before the first round of the 2007 presidential elections, Nicolas
Sarkozy said during an interview with philosopher Michel Onfray that he thinks
disorders such as paedophilia and depression have a genetic as well as social
basis, famously stating "I don't agree with you, I'd be inclined to think
that one is born a paedophile, and it is actually a problem that we do not know
how to cure this disease"; he also claimed that suicides among youth were
linked to genetic predispositions by stating, "I don't want to give parents
a complex. It's not exclusively the parents' fault every time a youngster commits
suicide." These claims were criticised by some scientists, including controversial
geneticist Axel Kahn. Nicolas Sarkozy later said, "What part is innate and
what part is acquired? At least let's debate it, let's not close the door to all
debate."
On Friday, July 27, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy delivered a speech in Senegal, in
which he made reference to "African peasants" (note that the French
word "paysans" can be translated as either "peasants" or
as "rural people") and said that colonialism was not the cause of
all of Africa's problems, and denied that France had ever exploited an African
country.
“ The tragedy of Africa is that the African has never really entered
into history... They have never really launched themselves into the future...
The African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the
seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the
eternal renewal of time... In this imaginary world, where everything starts
over and over again, there is room neither for human endeavour, nor for the
idea of progress... The problem of Africa... is to be found here. Africa's
challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history... It is to realise
that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return, because
it has never existed. ”
—Nicolas Sarkozy, at a speech in Senegal
The remarks were greeted with disappointment and widely condemned by African
intellectuals; some viewed them as racist. Alpha Oumar Konare, head of the African
Union commission, said "This speech was not the kind of break we were hoping
for... It reminded us of another age, especially his comments about peasants."
Other criticism was levelled at Nicolas Sarkozy's failure to acknowledge the
previous role of France in propping up abusive regimes. The French government
defended Sarkozy's speech, saying that he also criticised the laissez faire
economics of globalisation and proposed a partnership to help Africa confront
it. Konare's wife Adame Ba Konare also started a movement of promotion of African
History following Nicolas Sarkozy's speech.
A purported letter from South African president Thabo Mbeki praising Nicolas
Sarkozy for the speech and calling him a "citizen of Africa" raised
an outcry among the South African media.
Awards and Honours
- Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur
(2007 - Automatic when taking office)
o Was previously Knight
of the Légion d'honneur (since 2004)
- Grand Cross of the Ordre national du Mérite
(2007 - Automatic when taking office)
- Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III
(2004 - Spain)
- Commander of the Ordre de Léopold
(Belgium)
- Stara Planina (Bulgaria)
