Gérard Longuet

Gérard Longuet

Gérard Longuet (born February 24, 1946 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , Hauts-de-Seine ) is a top French official and politician . From February 27, 2011 to May 15, 2012, he was the successor of Alain Juppé as the 21st French Defense Minister of the Fifth Republic .

He was a minister in the first two cohabitation governments, a member of the National Assembly and then a senator for the Meuse department . He was president of the UMP parliamentary group in the Senate from 2009 to 2011. As a liberal , Gérard Longuet is vice-president of the Les Réformateurs movement in the UMP.

biography

Study and first engagement on the extreme right

After finishing school at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris, Gérard Longuet began studying law and literature. In 1966 he received his diploma from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris . In 1968 he received a Diplom d'études supérieures (DES) in political science .

In 1964 he took part with Alain Madelin in the creation of the Occident movement , an organization of militants from the extreme right in France, which was often involved in violent clashes with the extreme left.

In 1967 he demonstrated his quality as a leader of the movement when he emerged as a co-initiator of an Occident- led violent attack on students on the far left at Rouen University . One of the attacked fell into a coma, and Longuet was charged and arrested. He was fined 1,000 francs on July 12, 1967 for aiding and abetting "violent armed and willful assault" along with a dozen other militants of the extreme right, including Alain Madelin and Patrick Devedjian . In June 1968 he was given an amnesty. About this incident he said:

“J'assume avoir été d'extrême droite. On s'est simplement trompés sur le modèle colonial, qui ne pouvait perdurer. - I assume I belonged to the extreme right. It was just a fake colonial model that couldn't survive. "

In 1971 he entered the École nationale d'administration (ENA) and left it in 1973 (final year François Rabelais ). In the meantime, in 1972, he had edited the Front national's first economic program .

Political career on the parliamentary right

After leaving the ENA, he became director of the prefectural offices of Eure (1973/74), Somme (1974–1976) and office manager of Jacques Dominati , state secretary to Prime Minister Raymond Barre (1977–1978). In 1978 he was elected as a member of the Meuse département for the Union pour la démocratie française - Parti républicain . He lost his mandate in 1981 after François Mitterrand was elected President. Member of the Conseil général de la Meuse since 1979, he became vice-president in 1982. From 1984 to 1986 he was a member of the European Parliament .

Under the Chirac cohabitation government in 1986, he was in charge of telecommunications as State Secretary and then Deputy Minister. He left the ministry after the socialist victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections in 1988. After this election, he returned to his seat in the Meuse department. He was chairman of the Republican Party from 1990 to 1995.

In 1992 he became chairman of the Regional Council of Lorraine . In this role he supported the establishment of the LGV Est européenne , especially the construction of the Meuse TGV station .

In 1993 he was appointed to the government of Édouard Balladur . He received the telecommunications portfolio along with the Ministry of Industry, Post, Telecommunications and Foreign Trade.

Due to disagreements about the financing of the Republican Party and the construction of his villa, he had to resign from the Balladur government in October 1994. He undertook another temporary retreat to Lorraine. He was charged in 1995 with secretly funding the Republican Party. He benefited from a decision not to act on March 8, 2010, thanks in part to the Amnesty Act 1990 on party funding, also as the Amnesty Act only allowed prosecution in the case of personal enrichment.

Concerning the criminal process for "credit abuse" during the construction of his villa in St. Tropez (Var), he was acquitted, also at the Court of Appeal in Paris in November 1998. He was also acquitted in October 2005 in another matter.

Web links

Commons : Gérard Longuet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Longuets Homepage (French)
• Senate page (French)
• Entry on Gérard Longuet in the database of Members of the European Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frederic Charpier, Génération Occident: de l'extrême droite à la droite , éd. du Seuil, 2005, p. 132.
2. ↑ Frederic Charpier, Génération Occident: de l'extrême droite à la droite , éd. du Seuil, 2005, p. 142.
3. ^ Quarante ans après, les anciens d'Occident revisitent leur passé, Le Monde , February 13, 2005
4. ↑ Renaud Dély, Histoire secrète du Front national , Grasset.
5. ^ Pierre Roeder, "Ils ont fait le TGV Est" , L'Express , June 15, 2006
6. ↑ ^{a b c} “Gérard Longuet au ballon” ( Memento of the original dated December 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , infodujour.com , May 16, 2001 
7. ↑ "Financement du présumé occulte PR: Gerard Longuet mis en examen", Le Nouvel Observateur online 23 June, 2008
8. ^ "Non-lieu général pour les chefs de l'ex-parti républicain" , Figaro , March 8, 2010
9. ↑ "L'ex-ministre UMP Gérard Longuet blanchi" ( Memento of the original of March 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Le Journal du Dimanche , March 8, 2010  
10. ↑ "Pas de prison ferme au procès des marchés publics" ( Memento of the original from January 26, 2011 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. , TF1 -La Chaîne Info, October 26, 2005