Edith Cresson

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Édith Cresson, 2007

Édith Cresson (born January 27, 1934 in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris ) is a French politician ( PS ). She became the first woman to become French Prime Minister in 1991 , but only held that post for just under eleven months. From 1995 to 1999 she was a member of the European Commission responsible for science, research and development . Her involvement in a corruption scandal led to the resignation of the Santer Commission in 1999 .

Cresson is married and has two daughters.

Start of political career

Cresson studied at the École de haut enseignement commercial pour les jeunes filles . She earned a doctorate in demography and initially worked as an industrial engineer.

In 1965 she joined the Convention des institutions républicaines , a small party founded by François Mitterrand , which supported his first unsuccessful presidential candidacy that year. In 1971 she followed Mitterrand, who became her political mentor, when she entered the Parti socialiste . From 1974 she was party secretary responsible for youth and education, from 1975 to 1981 she was a member of its board. From 1977 to 1983 Cresson was mayor of Thuré ( Département Vienne ), then until 1997 of Châtellerault . In the 1979 European elections , she also won a seat in the European Parliament . Two years later, however, she gave it up again after being elected to the French National Assembly, of which she was a member until 1986.

After Mitterrand's victory in the 1981 French presidential election , Cresson became Minister of Agriculture in the Pierre Mauroy government . After a cabinet reshuffle, she was Minister for Foreign Trade and Tourism from 1983 to 1984, and from 1984 to 1986 under Prime Minister Laurent Fabius Minister for Industrial Development and Foreign Trade. After cohabitation from 1986 to 1988, Cresson was Minister for European Affairs in the Michel Rocard government from 1988 to 1990 . In this office she headed the organization for the French presidency in 1989 and took part in the negotiations on the Schengen Convention . Due to political disagreements with Rocard, she resigned from her position in October 1990 and switched to a consulting firm specializing in Eastern Europe.

Prime minister

On May 15, 1991, Cresson was surprisingly named Prime Minister by Mitterrand. With a view to the completion of the European internal market and the negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty , Cresson announced in her inaugural address the “success of France in Europe in 1993 and in the world in 2000” as her main political goal. An active industrial policy should reduce unemployment and promote sustainable development .

There was some controversy due to occasional undiplomatic to rude remarks by Cresson. In July 1991, she told ABC News that homosexuality was a "marginal" phenomenon, closer to "Anglo-Saxon" customs than "Latin". In addition, in various interviews in 1989 and 1991, she compared the Japanese with “ants”, who were characterized by an excessive workload that was unacceptable for European leisure and social standards. A controversy arose over the satirical puppet show Le Bébête show , in which Cresson was portrayed in a very negative way and an extramarital relationship with Mitterrand was suggested. She herself criticized this as sexism ; the makers of the show invoked freedom of expression . In mid-1991, Cresson's poll numbers were poor. After the PS suffered a severe defeat in the regional elections in March 1992, Mitterrand resigned and at the beginning of April 1992 appointed Pierre Bérégovoy , up to then Minister of Economics, as the new Prime Minister.

Member of the European Commission and corruption scandal

In the French parliamentary elections in March 1993 , Cresson did not run. The PS suffered another defeat, so that it came to a conservative government under Édouard Balladur . In January 1995 Cresson was proposed by Mitterrand (against Balladur's opposition) as a member of the European Commission ( Santer Commission ), where she became Commissioner for Science, Research and Development . Due to the accumulation of offices, she resigned as mayor of Châtellerault in 1997 . In the same year one was with her cancer diagnosed, of which she was cured in the 2000th

In 1999, Cresson was accused of nepotism after investigative journalism discovered that she had hired an unskilled friend as a personal advisor. Despite the minor damage in the matter, there was a lot of media coverage and finally a threat from the European Parliament to remove the Commission by means of a vote of no confidence . To forestall this, the entire commission resigned collectively in March 1999. The increased public awareness of corruption in the EU also led to the establishment of the European Anti-Fraud Office a few weeks later .

The Belgian police were also investigating fraud against Cresson following a complaint by a MEP . However, the proceedings were discontinued in 2004 by a Brussels district court because there was insufficient evidence of a criminal offense. On July 11, 2006, the European Court of Justice ruled that she had violated her duties as a member of the Commission, but, contrary to the request of the new European Commission ( Barroso I ) and the ECJ Advocate General, she did not impose a pension reduction on Cresson.

Activities after political career

After resigning as a commissioner, Cresson rarely appeared in public. In 2006 she published the book Histoires françaises , in which she presented her political experiences. In 2007 she announced her support for Ségolène Royal during the PS primaries for the 2007 presidential election .

See also

Web links

Commons : Édith Cresson  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rone Tempest, Los Angeles Times , July 23, 1991: Edith Cresson's Answer to TV Spoof: Hush Puppet! France's brutally frank premier says her caricature on one of the nation's most popular shows is sexist, unfair (English)
  2. ↑ Le Nouvel Observateur , January 16, 2001: Edith Cresson est atteinte d'un cancer ( Memento of October 2, 2009 in the web archive archive.today ) (French).
  3. ↑ See Gerhard Brunn, Die Europäische Einigung von 1945 bis today , Stuttgart 2002 / Bonn 2004, p. 303f.
  4. ↑ Jean Quatremer, Libération , July 1, 2004: La justice Belge abandonne les poursuites contre Cresson (French).
  5. ↑ Case C-432/04, see e.g. B. dejure.org , http://curia.europa.eu
  6. ↑ Florian Rötzer, Heise.de , July 13, 2006: The strange legal understanding of the European Court of Justice .
personal data
SURNAME Cresson, Edith
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician (PS), member of the National Assembly, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris