Michel Rocard

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Michel Rocard (2012)

Michel Rocard [ mi'ʃɛl ʁɔ'kaʁ ] (born August 23, 1930 in Courbevoie ; † July 2, 2016 in Paris ) was a French socialist politician . From 1967 to 1973 he was national secretary of the PSU , from 1993 to 1994 first secretary of the Parti socialiste . From 1988 to 1991 he was French Prime Minister. From 1994 to 2009 Rocard was a member of the European Parliament .

Life

Rocard was the son of Yves Rocard , a researcher , professor and Resistant , came from a Protestant family from the posh 7th arrondissement of Paris . He had a PhD in Philosophy from Sciences Po Paris (Institute for Political Studies) and graduated from ENA in 1958 .

In 1958 Rocard was appointed finance inspector, then in 1965 he was initially a consultant for economic planning in the planning accounting office, and later general secretary of the commission for economic balance sheets and budget of the nation.

From the SFIO to the PSU to the PS

Michel Rocard was from 1953 to 1955 in charge of the SFIO student association . In 1958 Rocard was one of the founders of the Parti socialiste autonome (PSA). When the Algerian War broke out, it joined forces with those communists who opposed Stalin , those socialists who broke with the reformist tradition of Guy Mollet , and left-wing Christian groups to form a new union. From this trend the Parti Socialiste Unifié (PSU) developed, which was founded in 1960 and which Pierre Mendès France , a declared opponent of the Algerian War in 1961, joined. In 1964, the Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT) trade union was formed around this new party .

After he made a name for himself at the Grenoble Congress in 1966, he became General Secretary of the PSU the following year (until 1973). Dividing the positions of the center-right, Rocard made a name for himself by writing under the pseudonym Georges Servet and tried to find a political solution to the crisis in May 1968: he won the support of the UNEF, the most important student union of this era.

He suffered his first defeat in the 1969 presidential election, when he won just 3.61% of the vote. In the same year followed a candidacy for the Yvelines department for a seat in parliament. So it happened that he was a member of the National Assembly without interruption until 1988 . In 1974 he supported François Mitterrand's campaign for the presidency . In October 1974 his request to affiliate the PSU with the Socialist Party (PS) under François Mitterrand received only 40% of the votes, after which he left the PSU and was accepted by the PS. Numerous members of the PSU, but also the CFDT union, followed him. In their ranks, he rose to be a member of the Executive Committee in February 1975.

Rocard's policy

The end of the 1970s was marked by the emergence of Rocardisme , the ideas and politics of Rocard, a popular movement, the Courant Rocard within the Socialist Party, which formed the opposite pole to the more traditional socialism of his rival François Mitterrand. Rocard thus became an unavoidable figure in the French intellectual landscape. Characteristic of his politics was a democratic and anti-authoritarian socialism, which relied above all on co-determination and self-administration in the economy and society ( socialisme autogestionnaire ) - hence also the strict rejection of communism  - and exemplary of the striving of a generation of socialists who stand in for after Mitterrand dealt with the legacy of Pierre Mendès-France.

Minister and Prime Minister

Michel Rocard (1981)

In addition to his post as mayor of the city of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine ( Yvelines department ), which he held from 1977 to 1993, Rocard was appointed Ministre d'État (Minister of State) for spatial planning and planning in the government after the election of his party colleague Mitterrand in 1981 Pierre Mauroys . From March 1983 he was then Minister of Agriculture in the Mauroy III cabinet . He remained in this position under Laurent Fabius , but resigned from his post in April 1985 in protest at the introduction of proportional representation for parliamentary elections.

After his intimate enemy François Mitterrand had been confirmed for a second term as president, Rocard appointed Rocard as prime minister on May 12, 1988. Some voices interpreted Rocard's appointment as a measure by Mitterrand to benefit from his popularity. The results of the parliamentary elections in the same year resulted in the formation of a second government under Rocard on June 26, 1988. Since the Parti socialiste and their left allies did not have their own majority in parliament, Rocard sought an overture (opening) of the government for bourgeois forces. His cabinet ( Rocard II ) also included three ministers from the bourgeois UDF (who, however, were excluded from their party). In addition, the members of the Christian Democratic CDS temporarily left the UDF: They formed their own parliamentary group in the National Assembly and voted on important votes with Rocard's government.

On the day of the appointment Rocard pushed for the signing of the Matignon Agreement , which sealed the autonomy of New Caledonia and put an end to the violent riots on the island. In a nationwide referendum on November 6, 1988 , voters confirmed the content of the Matignon Agreement. It is thanks to him that the Revenu Minimum d'Insertion (= a form of social welfare, RMI) was introduced on October 12, 1988, one of the extremely rare bills that were passed without a dissenting vote.

In 1990 Rocard tried to find a clean regulation of party funding , which should be linked to an amnesty for previous maneuvers. This failed because of a public outcry when the socialist justice minister had the preliminary investigation against his party's most important money laundering facility suppressed. Due to the poor economic situation and disagreements with François Mitterrand, Rocard felt compelled to resign from his position as Prime Minister in May 1991 . In contrast to the president, whose popularity fell among the people, Rocard was able to maintain his popularity, so that this repression in terms of personnel policy made itself felt in the results of the following parliamentary elections in 1993.

In October 1993 he was elected as the successor to Laurent Fabius as First Secretary (= party chairman) of the Socialist Party and undertook a profound reform of its internal management organs. After his election to the European Parliament in June 1994, he gave up the office again, then Henri Emmanuelli took over the party leadership.

Working for the EU

In the European elections in 1994 he was elected to the European Parliament (EP), where he sat in the group of European socialists . In addition, he was a member of the French Senate from October 2, 1995 to November 18, 1997 . He was re-elected as a member of the European Union in 1999 and 2004 and gave up his mandate on January 31, 2009. In this context, he made a name for himself through his commitment to the benefit of developing countries and, since 2003, through his refusal to introduce a software patent at EU level. In early 2005, an EU delegation of election observers under his leadership traveled to the Palestinian Territories to observe the presidential elections there.

Personal

Rocard married three times (1954, 1972 and 2002). There are two children each from the first and second marriage (Francis and Sylvie, Loïc and Olivier).

Awards

Quotes

On immigration policy: "France cannot absorb all the misery of the world."

When asked by a journalist whether he regrets never having been president, Rocard replied:

"I mean, having been an acceptable prime minister, but I don't know if I would have made a good president."

Publications in German

  • With all my heart in the matter. Translated from the French by Gerd Treffen, DEFAB, Ingolstadt 1989.

Web links

Commons : Michel Rocard  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean-Louis Andreani, Raphaëlle Bacqué: Michel Rocard, figure essentielle de la gauche, est mort. (Obituary, French) , lemonde.fr, July 2, 2016, accessed July 4, 2016
  2. ^ Moshe Maor: Parties, Conflicts and Coalitions in Western Europe. Organizational determinants of coalition bargaining. Routledge, London / New York 1998, pp. 84-85.
  3. ↑ Michel Rocard at www.senat.fr , accessed on July 4, 2016
  4. ^ "Misère du monde", ce qu'a vraiment dit Michel Rocard. Retrieved August 31, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Rocard, Michel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Servet, Georges (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician (PSA, PSU, PS), member of the National Assembly, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH 23rd August 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Courbevoie
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 2016
Place of death Paris