Jean-François Copé

Jean-François Copé (2016)

Jean-François Copé (born May 5, 1964 in Boulogne-Billancourt ) is a French politician ( RPR , UMP , Les Républicains ). From November 20, 2012 to June 15, 2014 he was chairman of the conservative party UMP. Copé has been mayor of the city of Meaux since 2005, as was the case from 1995 to 2002 .

family

Jean-François Copé is the son of gastroenterologist Roland Copé and his wife Monique Ghanassia. His paternal grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews from Romania who immigrated to France in the 1900s and 1920s. They survived the Holocaust hiding on a farm in the Limousin , their rescuers were honored as Righteous Among the Nations . The father shortened the family name from Copelovici to Copé in the 1950s . The mother's family were Sephardic Jews from Algiers , by virtue of the Algerian war in the 1954 metropolitan France attracted. Copé describes himself as a non-practicing Jew and a staunch supporter of secularism .

Copé was first married to PR consultant Valérie Ducuing from 1991 to 2007. The couple have two children. In December 2011 he married the psychologist Nadia Hamama, with whom he has another daughter.

education and profession

Copé graduated from two elite universities , Sciences Po and from 1987 to 1989 the École nationale d'administration (ENA). He then worked as an administrative officer at the state financial institution Caisse des Dépôts (CDC), then from 1991 to 1993 office manager of the President of Crédit local de France . In addition, he taught from 1990 to 1993 as Maître de conférences for economics and finance at Sciences Po in Paris . From 1998 to 2002 he was professeur associé at the University of Paris VIII .

Although he did not have a law degree, Copé was sworn in as a lawyer after leaving the government in May 2007 and continued this practice until 2011. From 2007 to 2010 he worked for the international law firm Gide Loyrette Nouel , after which he worked as an independent lawyer. He resumed his work as a lawyer after his resignation as party chairman.

Political career

As an economist, Copé was one of the advisors of the then RPR chairman and Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac from 1993–95 and worked as chief of staff to the assistant minister Roger Romani . In the presidential election in 1995 , he supported Chirac. In June 1995 Copé was a substitute candidate for the Minister-appointed Guy Drut member of the National Assembly for the 5th constituency of the Seine-et-Marne department . At the age of 31 he was the youngest member of the National Assembly.

In the local elections in 1995 he was elected mayor of the city of Meaux , which is located in the greater Paris area. Since he had no special connection to Meaux before, he was considered a "parachute jumper" who was "dropped" over the city by his party (parachuté) ; nevertheless he prevailed against the long-time incumbent Jean Lion ( PS ). In the 1997 parliamentary elections , Copé entered the 6th constituency of the same department (in which the north of Meaux is located), but was defeated in the second ballot by the socialist candidate Nicole Bricq . In 2001 he was re-elected as Mayor of Meaux. In the 2002 general election , Copé won against Bricq, but renounced his parliamentary mandate in favor of his government office. He also resigned from the mayor's office in June 2002.

Copé in 2008

In May 2002, Copé became State Secretary in the first and second cabinets of Jean-Pierre Raffarin . He was responsible for relations with Parliament in the Prime Minister's portfolio. In the Raffarin III cabinet , in March 2004 he was initially appointed minister assigned to the Ministry of the Interior and, following a cabinet reshuffle in November 2004, he was appointed minister for the budget ( ministre delegué au budget ) in the finance ministry ; he kept this position in the government of Dominique de Villepin . He was also a government spokesman from 2002 to 2007. In December 2005 he was re-elected Mayor of Meaux, which he then held in addition to his duties in national politics (re-elected in 2008 and 2014). In December 2006, Copé launched the neo- Gaullist, liberal -economic think tank Génération France.fr . After the 2007 presidential election , he left the government.

From 2007 to 2017 Copé was again a member of the 6th constituency of Seine-et-Marne in the National Assembly. From June 2007 to November 2010 he was chairman of the parliamentary group of the ruling UMP party in the National Assembly. On November 17, 2010, he was elected General Secretary of the party to succeed Xavier Bertrand .

Copé (left) and François Fillon (2010)

After the French presidential election in 2012 and Nicolas Sarkozy being voted out of office, Copé was elected party chairman of the UMP on November 18, 2012, thus prevailing against former Prime Minister François Fillon . The membership vote was overshadowed by allegations of manipulation and both Copé and Fillon have meanwhile both declared themselves the election winners. One day later, an internal electoral commission declared Copé to be the new party chairman, who was able to prevail against Fillon (49.97 percent) with 50.03 percent of the vote. Fillon did not acknowledge his defeat and claimed to have discovered errors in the election results. After weeks of discussions about the election result, both sides agreed on a solution, according to which Copé remained party chairman, but a new election should take place in September 2013, two years before the regular date. However, an extraordinary party conference of the UMP in June 2013 waived the early election and confirmed Copé as party chairman until November 2015.

On May 27, 2014, Copé announced his resignation as party chairman of the UMP on June 15, 2014, and the entire party leadership resigned. This was preceded by allegations against the party and against Copé personally, among other things, during the election campaign for Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012, having carried out significant orders without tendering to an advertising agency whose owners are friends with Copé. The advertising agency itself stated that, at the request of the UMP, it had invoiced the party for services that had not been rendered, which actually compensated for services from the 2012 presidential election campaign. With this, so the allegation, the UMP should have circumvented the current maximum limit for election campaign expenses in a presidential election. One day before Copé's resignation, the former deputy head of Sarkozy's election campaign admitted the allegations, but said that neither Copé nor Sarkozy had known of what had happened. A preliminary investigation against Copé and former UMP treasurer Catherine Vautrin was closed in September 2015 with a non-lieu .

The UMP renamed itself Les Républicains in May 2015 and Copé was appointed to the party's Politburo. In the run-up to the 2017 presidential election , Copé applied for the primary election of the Républicains and their center-right allies, but came in last with just 0.3% of the vote. He did not run for the 2017 parliamentary election , but declared that he wanted to concentrate on his mayor's office in Meaux from now on.

criticism

In 2011 he was reprimanded by the Académie de la Carpette anglaise for promoting the use of English in schools and on television.

Web links

Commons : Jean-François Copé  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stefan Simons: UMP in the crisis: France's conservatives choose the split. In: Spiegel Online . November 20, 2012, accessed June 9, 2018 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Jean-François Copé va reprendre son activité d'avocat. Le Parisien (online), June 13, 2014, accessed June 28, 2014 (French). 
3. ↑ Mayor of Meaux Website Ville de Meaux (fr)
4. ^ Solenn de Royer, Frédéric Dumoulin: Copé, l'homme pressé. Archipel, 2010, p. 121.
5. ^ Jean-Louis Beaucarnot: Le dico des politiques. Origines, cousinages, parcours, personnalités, indiscrétions. Archipelago, 2016, entry Jean-François Copé .
6. ↑ Biography ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2012 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. Personal website (fr) 
7. ↑ Copé abandonne son activité d'avocat Le Figaro Online, November 17, 2011 (fr)
8. ↑ Frederic Valletoux: A Meaux, Jean-François Copé se donne pour the atouts réussir son implantation politique. In: Les Echos , October 20, 1998.
9. ^ Virginie Le Guay: La première campagne de Jean-François Copé. In: Paris Match , August 13, 2016.
10. ↑ Profile of Copé website Assemblée Nationale (fr)
11. ↑ Simon, Stefans: UMP in the crisis: France's conservatives choose the split in Spiegel Online , November 20, 2012 (accessed November 20, 2012).
12. ^ French farce: Copé does not give up the chairmanship of the UMP at handelsblatt.com, November 22, 2012 (accessed November 22, 2012).
13. ^ Samuel Laurent, Jonathan Parienté: UMP: l'accord entre Fillon et Copé décrypté. Le Monde .fr, December 18, 2012, accessed December 18, 2012 (French). 
14. ↑ Si vous n'avez rien suivi au scandale qui secoue l'UMP. Le Monde (online), March 4, 2014, accessed May 27, 2014 (French). 
15. ↑ L'affaire Bygmalion devient "l'affaire des comptes de campagne du candidat Sarkozy". Le Parisien (online), May 26, 2014, accessed June 28, 2014 (French). 
16. ↑ La justice prononce un non-lieu dans l'affaire des frais de campagne de Sarkozy