Roland Dumas

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Roland Dumas (in the 1980s)
Roland Dumas (left) 1987 together with Helmut Kohl and Giscard d'Estaing
Dumas' signature under the two-plus-four contract

Roland Dumas (born August 23, 1922 in Limoges ) is a French lawyer and politician ( PS ). He was French Foreign Minister from 1984 to 1986 and 1988 to 1993 and President of the Conseil constitutionnel (Constitutional Court) from 1995 to 2000 .

Life

Dumas was in the Resistance (like his father Georges Dumas, who was executed by the Brehmer division for it in March 1944 ). From 1945 to 1949 he studied law at the University of Paris , at the Institut d'études politiques in Paris and at the London School of Economics and Political Science .

As a lawyer at the beginning of the Fifth Republic, Dumas successfully represented François Mitterrand (1916–1996) in a defamation process . He later represented Simone de Beauvoir , Jean-Paul Sartre , Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti as a celebrity lawyer . He represented Pablo Picasso when he had his painting returned to Guernica and handled his inheritance matters.

Political career

1956 to 1958 Dumas was elected to the French National Assembly as a member of the small Union démocratique et socialiste de la Resistance (UDSR). Before the presidential elections in 1965, Dumas arranged a meeting between the communist Émil Waldeck Rochet and Mitterrand, at which the project of a left union was first discussed. From 1967 to 1968 and again in 1981 Dumas was elected to the National Assembly in the Dordogne department now as a member of the Parti socialiste français .

In 1983 Dumas became Minister for Europe under President Mitterrand. In mid-1984 he was appointed government spokesman. Because of the Chad conflict, he was appointed negotiator with Libya . From 1984 to 1986 he was foreign minister under Prime Minister Laurent Fabius , during which he presented the EUREKA project in 1985 as a joint Franco-German initiative. From 1988 to 1993 he was again Foreign Minister under Prime Ministers Michel Rocard , Édith Cresson and Pierre Bérégovoy , then in 1995 President of the Conseil constitutionnel , the French constitutional court.

He was involved in various judicial affairs ( Elf affair) on suspicion of corruption. He was accused of helping his lover Christine Deviers-Joncour get a job with Elf and of having developed an expensive lifestyle with her between 1989 and 1993, which Deviers-Joncour received from the company's funds from former Elf boss Alfred Sirven . Deviers-Joncour is said to have received around € 10 million in illegal funds from Sirven, of which she put around € 2.6 million alone in a luxurious apartment in which Dumas had never lived. Ultimately, the corruption allegation against Dumas focused on a series of lavish restaurant visits (€ 50,000), Greek statuettes (€ 45,000) and a pair of expensive, hand-sewn shoes (€ 1,800) that Deviers-Joncour had given him. He was the subject of innumerable jokes, especially about the price of the said footwear. Dumas was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2001 , including 6 without parole . This judgment was overturned on appeal in 2003, and Dumas was acquitted. The background to the corruption allegations was the sale of six frigates to Taiwan by the armaments and electronics company Thales , against which Dumas had initially spoken out out of consideration for the People's Republic of China , but finally turned around and agreed to the deal.

During his presidency of the Conseil constitutionnel français , he announced the view that the legal immunity of the President of the Republic includes crimes and offenses under common law. This view was very controversial because of President Jacques Chirac's involvement in countless political and financial affairs ( election fraud , fudge deals, false bills, embezzlement of public funds, public contracts for bribes, etc.) and because of Roland Dumas' own involvement in the eleven Affair. In the spring of 1999 Dumas took a leave of absence from his chairmanship in the Constitutional Court, and a year later he resigned from this position when the proceedings were opened.

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)

Web links

Commons : Roland Dumas  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Dumas, Roland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Limoges