Gilles de Robien

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Gilles de Robien (2005)

Gilles de Robien (born April 10, 1941 in Cocquerel , Somme department ) is a French politician ( UDF ). He was a member of the National Assembly from 1986 to 2002 , where he was chairman of the UDF parliamentary group from 1995 to 1997. From 1989 to 2002 and again from 2007 to 2008 he was mayor of Amiens . From 2002 to 2005 he was Minister for Construction, Transport, Housing, Tourism and the Sea; then Minister for Education and Research until 2007.

From 2007 to 2014 he was a representative on the Governing Body of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and in 2010 President of the International Labor Conference.

resume

Gilles de Robien comes from a noble Breton family who had the rank of Viscount . He attended the Lycée Hoche in Versailles, completed a legal clerk training (capacité en droit) and began to study law at the University of Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) in 1961 , which he did not graduate. As a student, de Robien demonstrated for Algeria to remain with France . From 1965 he worked as a general agent for insurance companies in Amiens . In the same year he married Jeanne Hoarau de la Source, with whom he has four children. From 1967 he worked as a credit broker.

Political party

De Robien he joined the conservative-liberal party of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and in 1977 became chairman of the Parti républicain (PR) in the Somme department . The following year he applied for a seat in parliament for the first time, but without success. From 1978 onwards, PR belonged to the civil party alliance Union pour la démocratie française (UDF). In 1990 de Robien was accepted into the executive office and board of the UDF. At the same time, he sat in the party's National Council and Politburo from 1991. The Parti républicain was renamed Démocratie Libérale in 1997 . De Robien applied for the party chairmanship, but was defeated by Alain Madelin . In contrast to the latter, de Robien spoke out after the regional elections in March 1998 that candidates from the UDF and DL could also be elected nationally as regional president with the votes of the right-wing extremist front . Then he cut up his DL membership card in front of the cameras.

Instead, he founded the Pôle républicain indépendant et libéral (PRIL) together with François Léotard and a group of other former PR members . In November 1998 this merged into the “Nouvelle” UDF, which, under its chairman François Bayrou, was no longer just a party alliance but a unified party. Then de Robien was a member of the Politburo and deputy chairman of the UDF. He led François Bayrous' election campaign for the 2002 presidential election .

In May 2006, De Robien founded the inner-party current Société en mouvement ("Society on the move"), which advocated a continuation of the center-right coalition with the conservative UMP , while some of the UDF MPs around Bayrou expressed their distrust of the government . Shortly before the presidential election in April 2007 , de Robien Bayrou withdrew his support and instead spoke out in favor of UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy . He did not take part in the founding of the Nouveau Center , which split off from Bayrous UDF or Mouvement démocrate (MoDem) on the occasion of the parliamentary elections in June 2007 in order to participate in the “presidential majority” of Sarkozy.

Local and regional politics

Depiction of de Robiens at the Belfry of Amiens

Gilles de Robien was elected to the Amiens parish council in 1983. In 1989 he won the election as mayor of Amiens, which had previously been ruled for 18 years by the communist René Lamps . He was re-elected as mayor in 1995 and 2001. De Robien made Amiens a pilot city in matters of local democracy and was awarded the Marianne d'Or in 1999. From 1992 to 1998 he was also a member of the Picardy Regional Council ; from 1994 to 2008 chairman of the Amiens Métropole municipal association . After being appointed national minister, he resigned mayor's office. He was replaced by his party colleague Brigitte Fouré .

In the regional elections in Picardy in 2004, de Robien was the top candidate of the civil alliance of UDF and UMP. However, he was defeated in the runoff election to the Socialist candidate, Claude Gewerc, and thereupon also renounced his seat on the regional council. In March 2007, Fouré resigned to leave de Robien mayor again. In 2008, the business magazine Challenges named Amiens “best governed city in France” and de Robien “best mayor”. In the local elections in March 2008, he took on another term as mayor (supported by the UMP, but not the UDF successor party Mouvement Démocrate), but was defeated by the socialist Gilles Demailly and withdrew from local politics on the evening of the election.

MP

From the parliamentary elections in 1986, he was a member of the second constituency of the Somme department. He was also a member of the National Assembly's Finance Commission and the Research Commission on the Causes, Consequences and Prevention of Flood Disasters . From 1993 to 1998 he also held the position of Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly.

From 1995 to 1997 he was chairman of the UDF parliamentary group in the National Assembly, which then consisted of 215 members. De Robien initiated the Work Time Division and Reduction Act of June 11, 1996, which became known as loi de Robien . In August 1996, he was the first politician to declare his support for the movement of foreigners without a residence permit ("sans-papiers") , which occupied the Église Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle in Paris' 18th arrondissement , and received a delegation from them in his Office in the Palais Bourbon . In doing so, he opposed the zero tolerance policy of former interior minister Charles Pasqua from coalition partner RPR . After the parliamentary elections in 1997, he was the UDF's candidate for the office of President of the National Assembly, but had no chance because the left had a majority.

Government and international offices

De Robien (2nd from left) in conversation with the Argentine Minister of Labor (2nd from right), 2011

From May 2002 to May 2005 he was in charge of the Ministry of Equipment, Transport, Housing, Tourism and Marine Use in the cabinets of Jean-Pierre Raffarin . On June 3, 2005, Dominique de Villepin appointed him Minister of Education and Research within his new government; he held office until May 2007.

In August 2007, de Robien was appointed French representative on the Governing Body of the International Labor Organization (ILO). He held this position until the end of 2014. In June 2010 he was President of the International Labor Conference.

Web links

Commons : Gilles de Robien  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Cécile Pivot: Gilles de Robien. In: L'Express , May 7, 2002
  2. ^ Pascal Virot: Un "libéral-social" franc-tireur. Le maire d'Amiens n'hésite pas à bousculer son camp. In: Liberation , August 15, 1998.
  3. ↑ Guillaume Tabard: Querelle de libéraux chez Gilles de Robien. In: La Croix , September 8, 1998.
  4. ^ Democratie libérale dans la tourmente: l'affaire Jacques Blanc. Ina Politique, August 14, 1998 (Youtube video; 1:56 min).
  5. ↑ Gilles de Robien crée son propre courant. In: Nouvel Obs , May 22, 2006.
  6. ↑ Gilles de Robien se rallie à Nicolas Sarkozy. In: LaDepeche.fr , April 1, 2007.
  7. ↑ Sophie Huet, Judith Waintraub: Le Nouveau Center veut faire élire 25 députés. In: Le Figaro , May 30, 2007.
  8. ↑ A Amiens, le MoDem présente une liste face à l'ex-UDF Gilles de Robien. In: Le Monde , January 28, 2008.
  9. ↑ Marie Guichoux: Gilles de Robien, you président groupe UDF à l'Assemblée nationale, est le premier politique à avoir soutenu les sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard. Gilles le Preux. Il soutient les sans-papiers parce qu'il n'appartient pas à la "droite constipée". In: Liberation , August 28, 1996.
personal data
SURNAME Robien, Gilles de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician (UDF), member of the National Assembly
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Cocquerel ( Somme )