Georges Frêche
Georges Frêche (born July 9, 1938 in Puylaurens , Tarn , † October 24, 2010 in Montpellier ) was a French politician ( PS , independent from 2007). He was Mayor of Montpellier from 1977 to 2004 and then President of the Regional Council of Languedoc-Roussillon until his death .
Live and act
He studied legal history at the HEC , specialized in Roman legal history and was a professor at the University of Montpellier . He had been a member of the French Socialist Party (PS) since it was founded in 1969 . In his youth he was in Marxist and Maoist circles and campaigned against colonialism and the Algerian war . Later, however, he took on the concerns of the French Algeria ( pieds-noirs ), who are represented in Montpellier more than in any other French city.
Georges Frêche was a member of the Hérault department from 1973 to 2002 and mayor of Montpellier from 1977 to 2004 . As Lord Mayor, he sometimes made controversial decisions, including the construction of a tram line , the Olympic swimming pool and a network of libraries, including a large central library ("Library Émile Zola ").
After winning regional elections in 2004, he resigned from the post of Lord Mayor, but remained an advisor to the city of Montpellier and president of the Montpellier metropolitan area (Montpellier Agglomération) .
He campaigned for the construction of a second tram line in Montpellier and the “Odysseum” amusement park. In 2005 he tried to merge the municipalities of the Montpellier metropolitan area, Sète and Méze as a prelude to a metropolitan area , but this failed.
Frêche rejected the presidency of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in 1998 after a coalition between Jacques Blanc's party (then UDF ) and the far-right Front National . After the left won the regional elections in March 2004, Frêche became president of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in a left-wing coalition.
In this position he tried to rename the region Septimanie (the region was the seventh region under Roman rule, hence the name Septimanie). He also increased taxes by 38 percent for the renewal of the regional rail network, the construction of high schools and the reinforcement of the dikes of the Rhône.
Montpellier's German twin city Heidelberg made Frêche an honorary citizen in 2001.
criticism
Georges Frêche was famous and notorious during his lifetime for his controversial and sometimes populist remarks. At the end of January 2007, Georges Frêche was expelled from the Socialist Party for making racist statements regarding the French national soccer team . Frêche had told regional politicians: “In this team, nine out of eleven are black. Normal would be three or four; that would reflect society. The fact that there are so many here is because the white zeros are. "
In May 2006 he had already been expelled from party committees because he had insulted French people of North African descent as "subhuman". The reason for this was a polemical argument with a group of Harkis , whom he accused of being members of the UMP , even though the Gaullist parties had abandoned them after the end of the Algerian war .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Profile of Georges Frêche at chroniknet.de, accessed on November 22, 2015.
- ↑ Ehrenbuergerschaften at heidelberg.de, accessed on November 22, 2015.
- ↑ Georges Frêche, un habitué des dérapages at lemonde.fr, accessed on November 22, 2015.
- ↑ Frêche, exclu mais incontournable at liberation.fr, accessed on November 22, 2015.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Frêche, Georges |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French university professor and politician, member of the National Assembly |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 9, 1938 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Puylaurens , Tarn |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 24, 2010 |
| Place of death | Montpellier |