Albin Chalandon

Albin Chalandon (born June 11, 1920 in Reyrieux , Département Ain ; † July 29, 2020 ) was a French Gaullist politician ( UNR , UDR , RPR ). He was a member of the National Assembly several times and headed various ministries. From 1976 to 1983 he was General Director of Elf Aquitaine and from 1986 to 1988 he was French Minister of Justice.

Life

Chalandon was the son of the industrialist Pierre Chalandon (1879–1964), who was temporarily mayor of his home town Reyrieux in the eastern French region of Bresse . On his mother's side, Albin Chalandon was a grandson of the engineer and journalist Victor Cambon (1852-1927). He attended the Lycée Condorcet in Paris and studied literature and philosophy at the University of Paris (Sorbonne). During the Second World War, Chalandon resisted the German occupation and commanded a company of Maquisards , part of the armed resistance group Maquis de Lorris imForêt d'Orléans . In August 1944 he took part in the liberation of Paris . After the war, Chalandon became an officer in the Inspection générale des finances . In this capacity he was a member of the provisional head of government Léon Blum from 1946 to 1947 . Chalandon left the civil service in 1952 and together with Marcel Dassault founded the Banque commerciale de Paris , which grew to become the sixth largest credit institution in France, before merging with Banque Vernes in 1972 .

Chalandon was one of the supporters of General Charles de Gaulle and in 1948 joined his party Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF). When de Gaulle returned to head of state in 1958 after a temporary retreat from politics and founded the Fifth Republic, Chalandon joined the new Gaullist party Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR). He became their treasurer and temporarily general secretary. From 1962 to 1967 Chalandon was a member of the Conseil économique, social et environnemental .

In the parliamentary elections in March 1967 he was elected to the French National Assembly as a member of the newly created Hauts-de-Seine department (to the west of Paris). After the unrest in May 1968, he was confirmed as a member of parliament in the early election, a landslide victory of the Gaullist party, which had renamed itself Union pour la défense de la République (UDR). Shortly afterwards, however, he resigned his parliamentary mandate when President de Gaulle made him Minister of Industry in the Pompidou IV cabinet on May 31, 1968 . On July 11, 1968, however, there was a cabinet reshuffle and Chalandon took over the Ministry of Equipment and Housing under Prime Minister Maurice Couve de Murville . He also held this office in the Chaban-Delmas cabinet until July 5, 1972. Instead of the large housing estates built in the 1960s, the housing ministry promoted the construction of private homes during his tenure. The type of serial, inexpensive single-family houses promoted at the time is called "chalandonnette" after him .

After his provisional resignation from the government, Chalandon was re-elected to the National Assembly in March 1973, to which he belonged until 1976. From 1974 to 1975 Chalandon was deputy secretary general of the UDR, which dissolved the following year and was replaced by the neo-Gaullist Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) initiated by Jacques Chirac . In 1976 Chalandon took over the post of General Manager ( PGD ) at the state-owned mineral oil company ERAP , known under the brand name Elf Aquitaine . He led this until 1983. In the parliamentary election in March 1986, which won the RPR, Chalandon returned to politics again. He won a mandate in the Northern Department and became Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seal of France in the Chirac II cabinet (the first cohabitation ). After the election victory of the socialists in 1988 Chalandon left the government and ended his political career.

Albin Chalandon was married to Salomé Murat from 1951 to 2016, a granddaughter of the writer Marie de Rohan-Chabot and distant descendant of Napoleon's brother-in-law Joachim Murat . However, the couple had been separated since 1970 and Chalandon was in a relationship with the journalist Catherine Nay (* 1943), whom he also married in 2016.

Web links

• French Ministry of Justice: Cabinet de Albin CHALANDON (French)