Christian Blanc

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Christian Blanc (2007)

Christian Blanc (born May 17, 1942 in Talence ( Gironde department )) is a French manager and politician .

Blanc initially worked for a few years in the public service, including as a prefect , before moving into business and leading RATP , Air France and the French branch of Merrill Lynch . He then switched to politics and was elected to the National Assembly in 2002. Nicolas Sarkozy appointed him State Secretary for Development in the Capital Region in 2008 . Blanc resigned from this post in 2010 after it became known that cigars had been procured for his office at state expense.

Career

Childhood, adolescence and studies

Christian Blanc was born in Talence on May 17, 1942. His father was Marcel Blanc, member of the Resistance , high grade wall , first deputy of the mayor of Bordeaux after the liberation and trader of exotic fruits. Christian Blanc went to school in Bordeaux and attended the Lycée Montesquieu there before enrolling at the Institut d'études politiques de Bordeaux . During his studies he was involved in the Union nationale des étudiants de France (French: National Union of Students of France) and played an important role in this together with Michel Rocard . Towards the end of his studies, from 1964 to 1965, he became chairman of the Mutuelle nationale des étudiants de France (French student health insurance). At that time, Blanc was politically left-wing and dreams of a revolution. In the summer of 1967 he traveled to Cuba with Marc Kravetz, who later became an editor at Liberation .

In the public sector

Blanc began his working life as a fonctionnaire . He first worked at the Caisse des Dépôts , then at the Ministry of Youth and Sport. In September 1974 he joined the Parti Socialiste and organized, among other things, the pre-election campaign of Michel Rocard, who then, however, renounced a candidacy for the office of president in favor of François Mitterrand .

From 1981 to 1983 he was the cabinet director of the European Commissioner Edgard Pisani before he was appointed prefect of the Hautes-Pyrénées department. He then followed Pisani again, this time to New Caledonia , where he was Secretary General. In 1985 he returned to France for three years, where he was appointed Prefect of the Seine-et-Marne department .

He returned to New Caledonia in 1988 as head of a "dialogue mission" sent by the French government to help find a solution to the political conflict over independence that shook the island. In the course of the negotiations, the Matignon Agreement emerged , which granted New Caledonia more autonomy and was adopted in a referendum in November 1988 .

Career in business

After returning to France, Christian Blanc became President of the RATP for three years . He resigned from this post in 1992 after the government of Pierre Bérégovoy did not support him in introducing the minimum service in the company , which would have obliged part of the workforce to work even in the event of strikes. During his presidency, the decision to build metro line 14 was made .

Blanc was in 1993, during a severe crisis of the company, PDG of Air France . He implemented a rescue plan there, which was approved in a vote by the employees and contributed to the restructuring of the company. He resigned in 1997 because the Minister of Transport, Jean-Claude Gayssot , did not support Blanc's privatization plans.

After Jacques Chirac recommended him to Rafik Hariri , Blanc became a consultant with the Lebanese airline Middle East Airlines from 1998 to 1999 . He then worked as a trustee for the non-profit Action contre la faim (acting against hunger) and as president of two start-ups , Skygate et Harmonie.

From 200 to 2002 he was President of Merrill Lynch France . As part of his job, he was in the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001 , but was just outside the building to smoke a cigar at the time of the attacks.

Political career

Christian Blanc.

Blanc gained his first political experience in the 1970s in the PS. There he worked mainly for Michel Rocard and thus contributed to his election as mayor of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine . In one of her books on the Fifth Republic , the journalist Michèle Cotta reports that Blanc had thought out loud in front of journalists about a rift between Rocard and the first secretary of the PS François Mitterrand .

In the parliamentary elections in 2002 , Christian Blanc applied for a seat in the National Assembly as a candidate on the list of Énergies democrates (Democratic Energies) in the 3rd constituency of Paris . He received 9.63% of the vote. Six months later, Christian Blanc ran again in a by-election to the National Assembly in the 3rd constituency of the Yvelines department , which had become necessary after the resignation of Anne-Marie Idrac . He was elected in the first ballot and joined the UDF parliamentary group .

In 2003, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin commissioned Blanc to conduct an economic study. Six months later, Blanc presented his report Pour un écosystème de la croissance (For an ecosystem of growth), proposing a reform of the university and research landscape and the creation of pôles de compétitivité ( poles of competitiveness). Thanks to state subsidies and special tax regulations, these poles should strengthen competitiveness in economically deficient regions and link research in public institutions and companies. The government then commissioned further studies on such Poles and in 2004 created the legal basis for them.

Blanc called on Jacques Chirac to resign in 2006 in order to avoid "16 months of waiting" and doing nothing before the next presidential election. In the same year he founded with Alain Lambert ( UMP ) and Jean-Marie Bockel (PS) an "Action Committee for the Modernization of France" ("comité d'action pour la modernization de la France"), which is responsible for a "comprehensive and coherent" Modernization of the French economy and society occurred and the "dangers of debt" stressed the need for growth. He was a member of the Commission Pébereau , a commission chaired by Michel Pébereau , which dealt with the French national debt and put it at 2 trillion euros. From 2002 to 2007, Blanc was also President of Énergies démocrates and founder of Énergies 2007 , political groups that advocated reform of the state and stronger European unification.

Blanc supported Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential election . Shortly before the parliamentary elections of the same year , he joined the Parti social libéral européen (European social liberal party), the later Nouveau Center (New Center). With the support of the UMP, he was re-elected in the first round of elections.

Blanc was elected vice-president of the Nouveau Center and stood for this in the local elections in 2008 in Le Chesnay against the incumbent Philippe Brillault. His list received 36.28% of the vote, lagging behind Brillault's.

State Secretary for the Development of the Capital Region and the "Cigar Affair"

On March 18, 2008 Christian Blanc was appointed State Secretary for the Development of the Capital Region and then gave up his mandate; he was followed by his representative Colette Le Moal. As Secretary of State he was for the project Grand Paris in charge that the city Paris close to associate with their suburbs. The plans include the Grand Paris Express , an automatic metro network, and a reform of the administrative structure.

In June 2010, the Canard enchaîné made public that the tax authorities were subjecting Blanc to a tax audit because they questioned the correctness of its tax returns from 2004 to 2009. A short time later, the satirical weekly newspaper revealed that Blanc had procured cigars worth 12,000 euros at the expense of the ministry. The report was received by the AFP and received wide coverage in the media. Blanc stated that he did not know anything about the cigar purchases and accused his former office manager Guillaume Jublot of having passed the information on to the Canard enchaîné . Before the article was published, Blanc found out about it and initially reimbursed the state 3,500 euros, at his discretion the value of the cigars he had consumed himself. On the advice of François Fillon , he finally reimbursed the entire sum of 12,000 euros. Because of this affair, Blanc also came under pressure within the government. At the direct request of Sarkozy and Fillon, he finally resigned on July 4, 2010 , together with the State Secretary for Cooperation and the Francophonie Alain Joyandet. The opposition and parts of the media described the resignations as pawns to take pressure off the government after the Bettencourt affair . The official business of Blanc was taken over by the Minister for Rural Areas Michel Mercier .

One month after leaving the government, on August 5, 2010, Blanc was automatically re-elected to the National Assembly. He did not run again in the 2012 elections.

Fonts

  • Le grand Paris du XXI e siècle , Le Cherche midi, 2010
  • La Croissance ou le chaos , Éditions Odile Jacob, 2006
  • Pour un écosystème de la croissance (rapport remis au Premier ministre), 2004
  • Le Lièvre et la tortue (with Thierry Breton ), Plon, 1994
  • Pour un état stratège garant de l'intérêt général (Rapport de la Commission du Plan, La Documentation Française), 1993

Web links

Commons : Christian Blanc  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michel Faure: L'inclassable Christian Blanc. L'Express, November 4, 1993, accessed June 18, 2014 (French).
  2. ^ Biography of Christian Blanc. (No longer available online.) French government, formerly the original ; Retrieved June 29, 2014 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.gouvernement.fr  
  3. ↑ a b c Le cigare qui avait sauvé Christian Blanc. Liberation , July 5, 2010, accessed June 17, 2014 (French).
  4. ↑ Jean Watin-Augouard: Histoires de marques . Editions d'organization, p. 28
  5. ↑ Michèle Cotta: Cahiers secrets de la V e République, Volume 2 (1977-1986) . Fayard, 2008, p. 195.
  6. ↑ Michèle Cotta: Cahiers secrets de la V e République, Volume 2 (1977-1986) . Fayard, 2008, p. 192.
  7. ^ Résultats des élections législatives 2002 / Législatives / Les résultats / Elections - Ministère de l'Intérieur. Retrieved July 1, 2014 (French).
  8. ↑ Christian Blanc: Pour un écosystème de la croissance. Archived from the original on October 11, 2004 ; Retrieved July 1, 2014 (French).
  9. ↑ Christian Blanc: Partez, M. Le président , in: Le Monde from January 14, 2006. Read online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / doc.sciencespobordeaux.fr  
  10. ↑ Report de la commission Pébereau. (PDF) Archived from the original ; Retrieved July 1, 2014 (French).
  11. ^ Christian Blanc: Je choisis Sarkozy. Le Figaro , January 25, 2007, accessed July 1, 2014 (French).
  12. ↑ Résultats des élections législatives 2007 / Législatives / Les résultats / Elections - Ministère de l'Intérieur. Retrieved July 1, 2014 (French).
  13. ↑ Christian Blanc de Sommé s'expliquer sur ses Déclarations Fiscales. Liberation, June 8, 2010, accessed July 1, 2014 (French).
  14. ↑ a b Blanc a reçu € 12,000 de cigares. Le Figaro, according to an AFP agency report, June 15, 2010, accessed on July 1, 2014 (French).
  15. ↑ Qui est l'homme par qui les ennuis de Christian Blanc seraient arrivés? L'Express, June 15, 2010, accessed July 1, 2014 (French).
  16. ↑ Fillon exige de Christian Blanc qu'il rembourse ses achats de cigares. France Info , June 23, 2010, accessed July 1, 2014 .
  17. ↑ Joyandet et Blanc quittent le gouvernement. Le Figaro , July 5, 2010, accessed July 1, 2014 (French).
  18. ↑ Blanc / Joyandet, simple fusibles. (No longer available online.) Le Journal du dimanche , July 4, 2010, archived from the original on September 7, 2010 ; Retrieved July 1, 2014 (French). 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lejdd.fr
  19. ↑ Après les démissions de Blanc et Joyandet, Woerth peut-il tenir. Le Monde , July 5, 2010, accessed July 1, 2014 (French).
  20. ↑ Le secrétaire d'État abandonne le chantier du Grand Paris au milieu du gué. Les Échos , July 5, 2010, accessed July 1, 2014 (French).
  21. ^ Christian Blanc retourne à l'Assemblée nationale. Le Parisien , August 6, 2010, accessed July 1, 2014 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Blanc, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician and manager
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Talence