André Lagasse

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André Lagasse (born March 21, 1923 in Ixelles / Elsene ; † August 11, 2010 ) was a Belgian university professor of law and politician of the Front démocratique des francophones (FDF). Lagasse was a co-founder of the FDF and made it into the Senate in 1965 as the first of his party, of which he was chairman from 1972 to 1975 . He was also the first chairman of the Brussels agglomeration, the predecessor of today's Brussels-Capital Region . In the course of his academic career, Lagasse held the post of Dean of the Law Faculty of the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) from 1971 to 1973 .

Life

The von Lagasse family originally came from the Thiérache area and moved to Brussels in the 19th century . André Lagasse was the third of six children in his family. After completing school at the age of 15 at the Collège Saint-Boniface in Ixelles / Elsene, he first moved to the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis (FUSL) in Brussels and then to Leuven , where he studied law at the then unified Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) studied. In 1943, under German occupation, against which he had actively fought armed resistance, he received his doctorate. He successfully completed a separate degree in social law in 1949 at the University of Nancy in France .

After completing his studies, Lagasse joined the UCL Law Faculty in 1948, first as an assistant and later as a lecturer and professor. Before the final split in the old Catholic University of Leuven (1968), André Lagasse belonged to the French-speaking association of professors, Association du corps académique et du personnel scientifique de l'Université de Louvain (ACAPSUL) and helped shape the relocation of the francophone UCL to New Leuven . From 1971 to 1973 he was Dean of the Faculty of Law and in 1974 he founded the Center de droit des obligations (Center for Obligations Law) with Professors Dalcq and Fontaine . In 1984 he retired .

Political career

In December 1963, André Lagasse and three hundred other university professors founded the Rassemblement pour le Droit et la Liberté (RDL) movement, which advocates the protection of fundamental rights and against intolerance, fanaticism and coercion in cultural and linguistic matters across parties and confessions. His entry into active politics was in the regionalist party with the Christian Democratic tendency Rénovation wallonne . From 1963 to 1965 he was a member of the steering committee of the joint permanent delegation of the four Walloon movements Mouvement populaire wallon , Wallonie libre , Rénovation wallonne and Mouvement libéral wallon .

In 1964, André Lagasse was one of the founding members of the Front démocratique des francophones (FDF) party, along with personalities such as Lucien Outers , Marcel Thiry and Léon Defosset , which to this day is particularly committed to the interests of the francophone population in Brussels and in the suburbs of Brussels . In the parliamentary elections of 1965, Lagasse was the first politician of the then new party to make it to the Senate. He was able to hold this mandate until 1987. In the Senate, he focused his work primarily on the Brussels Statute and the city's international role. Endeavoring to promote the French language, Lagasse, along with Lucien Outers and François Perin, also helped found the Association Internationale des parlementaires de langue française (AIPLF) in 1967 , the predecessor of today's parliamentary assembly of the Francophonie .

Before the parliamentary elections of March 31, 1968, the FDF entered into a list connection with the Walloon regionalist party Rassemblement wallon (RW) under François Perin, which remained in existence until the RW broke up in 1976. The FDF-RW, which was supported by Lagasse and at whose head Jean Devieusart was elected, was able to fight for a good election result. However, André Lagasse experienced his greatest success in the first (and only) agglomeration elections on November 21, 1971, in which the Council and the College of the Brussels Agglomeration, the direct predecessor of the Brussels-Capital Region, were put together. For these elections, the FDF, the French-speaking wing of the liberal Parti de la liberté et du progrès (PLP) (predecessor of the Parti Réformateur Libéral (PRL)) and some other regionalist parties had united under the name Rassemblement Bruxellois (RB). The RB celebrated an undisputed election victory with 42 out of 83 seats and André Lagasse was appointed the first and only chairman of the agglomeration.

Within the FDF, Lagasse was party chairman from May 1972 to January 1975. He advocated the rapprochement between FDF and PRL that finally took place in 1992, which later became today's Mouvement Réformateur (MR). At the local level, he was a member of the Brussels City Council from 1970 to 1988.

In 1987, Lagasse caused a final surprise. In the upcoming parliamentary elections he had deliberately taken one of the last places on the list in the Nivelles constituency for the Chamber of Deputies , because he wanted to end his political career. Thanks to the Belgian electoral system, however, he was able to benefit from surplus votes from the Brussels constituency and, to everyone's amazement, made the leap into the chamber, where he remained until 1991. Then he finally took his leave from active politics.

André Lagasse died on August 11, 2010.

Overview of political offices

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. Vanderstichel: Inventaire des papiers Jean Van Ryn (1944-1980) , p. 4, available on the website ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 108 kB) of the GEHEC-UCL. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uclouvain.be
  2. ↑ See the history of the party on the official website of the FDF (French)
  3. ↑ Lalibre.be: André Lagasse, you fondateur FDF, est décédé (11 August 2010) (fr.); Obituary for the death of André Lagasse on the official website of the FDF (French).
personal data
SURNAME Lagasse, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Ixelles / Elsene
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 2010