Benoît Hamon

Benoît Hamon (2016)

Benoît Hamon (born June 26, 1967 in Saint-Renan , Finistère ) is a French politician ( Parti Socialiste , Génération.s ). He joined in December 2015 the Regional Council of Ile-de-France to.

In the presidential elections in 2017 he was the candidate of the Parti Socialiste. He received 6.36% of the vote in the first ballot on April 23, 2017 and did not make it into the runoff election. In July of the same year he left the PS and founded the democratic-socialist party Génération.s, le mouvement.

From April 2 to August 25, 2014, Hamon was Minister for Education, Universities and Research in Valls Cabinet . Since May 2012 he has been Assistant Minister for Social Economy and Solidarity in the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Foreign Trade in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Ayrault . From 2004 to 2009 he was a member of the European Parliament .

Life

Studies and professional career

Hamon was born the son of a secretary and an engineer at the state naval shipyard Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN) in Brest . Between 1978 and 1980 he lived with his parents with Marist Fathers in Dakar , where he received a primary education shaped by Catholicism . After his parents divorced, he returned to France and grew up in Brittany . After attending school, he studied history at the University of West Brittany and during this time campaigned against the university reform planned by Alain Devaquet , then Minister for Higher Education and Research in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac .

After completing his studies, Hamon became Parliamentary Assistant to Pierre Brana in 1991 , who represented the Gironde department as a member of the Parti Socialiste in the National Assembly . In 1993 he was one of the founders of the Mouvement des Jeunes Socialistes (MJS), the youth association of the PS; until his replacement by Régis Juanico in 1995, he acted as its first president. Also in 1993 he founded the Nouvelle Gauche, a movement within the PS, together with Jean-Patrick Gille .

From 1995 to 1997 he worked as youth policy advisor to the PS's first secretary , Lionel Jospin ; From 1997 to 1998 he was technical advisor for youth employment and from 1998 to 2000 political advisor in the office of the Minister for Employment and Solidarity, minister in the Jospin cabinet . From 2001 to 2004 he was director of strategic planning at the market research company Ipsos .

MEP

Benoît Hamon (2000)

Hamon (center) with the PS First Secretary Martine Aubry and Party Secretary Harlem Désir (left) at a public event on January 29, 2009 in Paris

At the same time, he became a member of the municipal council of Brétigny-sur-Orge , a small town in the Essonne department , in 2001 and was a member of it until 2008. In October 2002, together with Julien Dray , Arnaud Montebourg , Christian Paul and Vincent Peillon , he founded the Nouveau Parti socialiste (NPS), a new group within the PS.

As a member of the PS National Office, Hamon was elected member of the 6th European Parliament in the 2004 European elections in the constituency of Western France , to which he belonged until the end of the 2009 legislative period. During his membership in the European Parliament, from September 2004 to July 2009, he was Vice-Chair of the Delegation for Relations with the United States and a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. After the PS party convention in Le Mans in November 2005, the NPS broke, on the one hand because of the party program that had been adopted and on the other hand because of the candidate question for the 2007 presidential election . While Montebourg and Peillon stood up for Ségolène Royal , Hamon spoke out in favor of Laurent Fabius . Hamon was also appointed National Secretary of the Party for European Affairs at the party convention.

Candidate for party chairmanship in 2008

At the party congress in Reims in July 2008 , he founded Un Monde d'Avance, a new movement within the party that united various inner-party groups and circles and which also includes politicians such as Henri Emmanuelli and Pascal Cherki .

Martine Aubry, Benoît Hamon and Ségolène Royal competed in the primary election for First Secretary of the PS, which immediately followed the Reims Congress. The incumbent First Secretary François Hollande had already announced in the run-up to the congress that he would no longer run for office. The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, who was favored by the polls, declined to run and called for Martine Aubry to be elected. The first ballot on November 20, 2008, Royal won with 42.9% of the vote, ahead of Aubry (34.5%) and Hamon (22.6%). For the runoff election the following day, Hamon called for Aubry to be elected. Martine Aubry saw the first result of this runoff election as the winner with 42 votes ahead of Royal (50.02 to 49.98%).

PS spokesman and member of the government

In December 2008, Aubry, the PS's new First Secretary, appointed Hamon as the party's press secretary; he held this post until May 16, 2012. In the regional council elections in March 2010, Hamon was also elected a member of the regional council of the Île-de-France region and has been a member since then.

After the election of François Hollande as President and the appointment of Jean-Marc Ayrault as Prime Minister, he was appointed Assistant Minister for Social Economy and Solidarity in his cabinet on May 17, 2012 and as such was Minister for Economy, Finance and Foreign trade subordinated to Pierre Moscovici .

A few days before his appointment as Minister Associate, he criticized Angela Merkel as party spokesman before Hollande's visit to Germany for her stance on the European Fiscal Pact , saying that Merkel could “not alone decide the fate of Europe in terms of German economic interests. We did not vote so that there would be a President of the EU by the name of Angela Merkel, who alone decides the fate of everyone else. This fiscal pact installs a strict austerity policy. ”This austerity policy has led Greece to failure and now the crisis is spreading in Spain, Portugal and all of Europe. France is therefore insisting on renegotiating the fiscal pact for more budget discipline so that the economy can regain momentum through growth.

When the Valls I cabinet was formed, Hamon was appointed Minister of Education, Universities and Research on April 2, 2014. At the end of August 2014, together with Economics Minister Arnaud Montebourg , he triggered the resignation of the Valls I government when the two of them sharply criticized President François Hollande's economic policy in separate newspaper interviews . Hamon declared that he no longer wanted to belong to Valls II's cabinet , which was in line with Hollande's demand that Valls only appoint people to the government who agreed with the course he had defined.

Candidate for presidency 2017

After leaving the government, Benoît Hamon took up his mandate in the National Assembly . He was elected to this office in the 2012 parliamentary election for the Yvelines department , but did not take up the mandate due to his membership in the government. In August 2016, he declared himself a candidate for the 2017 presidential election in France , thus running in the PS primaries . He won the first round of the primary election on January 22, 2017 with 36% of the vote. In the runoff election, voters chose between Hamon and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls ; Hamon received about 58% of the vote. His opponent Valls had warned before the vote that the election of Hamon would mean “certain defeat” (“la défaite assurée”) for the socialists. After Hamon's election, political commentators said that Hamon's main benefit was that he had distanced himself in good time from Hollande's policies, which were unpopular among many socialist partisans - in contrast to his rival Valls, who stood for this policy.

In the first round of the presidential election , Hamon was eliminated in fifth place with 6.36 percent of the vote. He achieved a historically bad result for the Parti Socialiste (PS) . Hamon made a recommendation for Macron after admitting his defeat for the runoff election between the two top-ranked candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen (FN). In the parliamentary election that followed in June 2017 , Hamon was voted out of office. He achieved 22.59% of the vote in his constituency in the first ballot and only third place behind the candidate from the Macron liberal party, La République en Marche , and the candidate from the conservative party Les Républicains . He was therefore not admitted to the runoff election.

Leaving PS and founding Génération.s, le mouvement

On July 1, 2017 Hamon left the PS and founded the democratic-socialist and ecological party Génération.s, le mouvement (German: "Generation.s, the movement"), before December 2, 2017 under the name "July 1st Movement" ( Mouvement du 1er Juillet, M1717). The Génération.s is to run for the European elections in 2019 as part of a “progressive European bloc”, for example together with lists of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 supported by Yanis Varoufakis . In December 2017, Génération.s had 42,000 members and 550 local associations. In the European elections in May 2019 , his list only achieved 3.3% (741 532 votes) and was therefore unable to enter the European Parliament.

Political positions

Hamon belonged to the left wing of the Parti Socialiste, the so-called Frondeurs, the opposition to Hollande and Valls within the party and their parliamentary group, which criticized the government's economic policy as too liberal. In detail he represented in the socialist election campaign for the presidential candidacy a. a. the following positions, which break with the socialist policy of the government: (I) work in favor of a basic income for the entire population of up to EUR 750 per month, combined with an expansive economic policy that breaks with the previous government policy; (II) legalization of cannabis use, (III) a relatively open refugee policy and (IV) a conciliatory stance towards Islam (although the government under Valls is accused of an overly dogmatic stance with regard to secularity ).

Web links

Commons : Benoît Hamon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on Benoît Hamon in the Members' database of the European Parliament
• Private homepage

Individual evidence

1. ^ Conseil régional d'Île-de France: Members of the regional council
2. ↑ ^{a b} elections.interieur.gouv.fr
3. ↑ ^{a b} spiegel.de: Results, graphics
4. ↑ ^{a b} Abel Mestre: Pour relancer son mouvement, Benoît Hamon le rebaptise «Génération.s». Réunis au Mans, samedi, les partisans de l'ancien socialiste veulent construire un mouvement “écologiste, solidaire et humaniste”. In: Le Monde . December 3, 2017, accessed December 30, 2017 (French). 
5. ^ ^{A b} French left-wing politician Hamon starts new movement. In: derStandard.de . December 3, 2017, accessed December 30, 2017 . 
6. ↑ see list of members of the 6th European Parliament
7. ↑ Les diplômes des ministres du Gouvernement Valls
8. ↑ Homepage of Un Monde d'Avance ( Memento of the original dated February 2, 2009 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. 
9. ↑ Samuel Potier: Duel serré entre Aubry et Royal pour la direction du PS. Le Figaro.fr, November 21, 2008, accessed September 30, 2011 (French). 
10. ↑ Le PS s'enfonce dans la crise après l'élection sur le fil de Martine Aubry ladepeche.fr, November 21, 2008
11. ↑ his predecessor was Julien Dray, his successor was David Assouline .
12. ↑ Benoît Hamon ministre délégué chargé de l'Economie sociale et solidaire ( Memento of June 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: TF1 from May 16, 2012 (page accessed on June 4, 2012)
13. ^ Hamon, de la gauche du PS à l'économie sociale et solidaire . In: Le Monde of May 21, 2012.
14. ↑ Euro zone: French socialists criticize Merkel's claim to power. Zeit online , May 13, 2012, accessed September 17, 2015 . 
15. ^ François-Xavier Bourmaud: Hollande et Valls projetés dans une crise sans précédent. Le Figaro.fr , 25 August 2014, accessed on 17 September 2015 (French). 
16. ↑ Démission du Gouvernement Valls: Montebourg et Hamon s'en vont. France Info , August 25, 2014, accessed September 17, 2015 (French). 
17. ^ Spiegel Online: "Utopist" Hamon refers Valls to second place , January 23, 2017
18. ↑ Spiegel Online: France's socialist Hamon: Winner with a handicap , January 29, 2017
19. ↑ Arthur Berdah: Valls sur Hamon: "Vous avez le choix entre la défaite assurée et la victoire possible." Le Figaro, January 22, 2017, accessed January 30, 2017 (French). 
20. ↑ Hamon and Valls in front in the socialist primaries. Zeit online, January 22, 2017, accessed January 30, 2017 . 
21. ↑ tagesschau.de
22. ^ Ministère de l'intérieur: Results of the parliamentary elections in the 11th constituency of the Yvelines (French) .
23. ↑ Stefan Simons: French Socialists: "The situation is bad". In: Spiegel Online . December 27, 2017, accessed December 30, 2017 . 
24. ^ Lilian Alemagna: “Vive la gauche” cherche une issue à la fronde. Liberation , November 30, 2014, accessed September 17, 2015 (French). 
25. ↑ Le Monde: Laïcité, environnement, travail: ce qui divise Hamon et Valls , comparison of the election programs of M Valls and B Hamon, January 25, 2017 (French).