Jean-Marie Bockel

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Jean-Marie Bockel, 2014

Jean-Marie Bockel (born June 22, 1950 in Strasbourg ) is a French politician ( PS , LGM , UDI ). He was a member of the French Senate from 2004 to 2007 and again since 2010. From 1989 to 2010 he was mayor of Mulhouse , from 2007 to 2017 chairman of the La Gauche modern party .

Life

Bockel grew up in the small town of Thann in southern Alsace . He studied law at the University of Strasbourg and worked as a lawyer from 1976 after completing his Maîtrise degree .

He joined the Parti socialiste (PS) in 1973 and in 1974 became secretary of the socialist youth organization Jeunes Socialistes in the Haut-Rhin department . He was initially close to the Center d'études, de recherches et d'éducation socialiste (CERES) of Jean-Pierre Chevènement , which belonged to the left wing of the PS. In the 1981 parliamentary election, Bockel was elected member of the 4th constituency of Haut-Rhin in the National Assembly. In this position he replaced the former Mülhausen mayor Émile Muller ( UDF ). From 1982 to 1989 Bockel was a member of the General Council of the Haut-Rhin department. In the local elections in 1983 he ran in Mulhouse (Mulhouse) as a candidate for mayor of the PS, but lost 37.7% to the incumbent Joseph Klifa of the bourgeois UDF.

In the Fabius cabinet , Bockel was State Secretary for Trade from July 1984 to February 1986. Following Michel Crépeau , who moved to the Ministry of Justice, Bockel was Minister for Trade, Crafts and Tourism from February to March 1986. After the change of government he was again a member of the National Assembly from 1986 to 1993, this time as a member of the 5th constituency of Haut-Rhin. In 1987 he became the spokesman for the leftist movement “Socialisme et République” within the PS, led by Jean-Pierre Chevènement .

In the local elections in 1989, Bockel defeated incumbent Joseph Klifa with 37.4 to 34.4 percent and became mayor of the Alsatian city of Mulhouse. As a result of the landslide victory of the center-right parties in the parliamentary elections in 1993, Bockel lost his seat in the National Assembly to UDF representative Klifa. In the mayoral election in 1995, however, Bockel was re-elected with 53.1% in the second ballot. In addition, he regained his parliamentary mandate in 1997 and sat again in the National Assembly until 2002. From the late 1990s onwards, Bockel criticized the PS's adherence to socialist redistribution policies and sought a liberal social policy modeled on Tony Blair or Gerhard Schröder . In 1999 he published the work La 3ème gauche, petit manifeste social libéral (“The third left, small socialliberal manifesto”).

In March 2001, Bockel was confirmed with 52.35% in the second ballot for another term of office as Mayor of Mulhouse. From 2001 to 2004 he was also president of the community association Communauté d'agglomération Mulhouse Sud-Alsace (CAMSA), were among the Mulhouse and surrounding communities, as well as 2001-2007 president of the Association of maires de grandes villes de France (Association of Mayors of French Large cities). From 2004 to 2007 he represented the Haut-Rhin department in the French Senate . At the PS party congress in Le Mans in November 2005, he introduced the key motion “For a liberal socialism”, which was only supported by 0.64% of the delegates.

Bockel in 2007

After Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of the conservative UMP , Bockel was one of the few PS politicians - along with Bernard Kouchner - who accepted Sarkozy's offer of an overture ("opening") from his center-right government for representatives of the left. In June 2007 he was appointed State Secretary for Cooperation and Francophonie in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (led by Kouchner) and was a member of the Fillon II cabinet . Like Kouchner, Bockel was then excluded from the PS. In September 2007 he founded the social liberal party La Gauche moderne ("The modern left").

After this political change of sides, he was supported by the center-right parties in the Mülhausen mayoral election in March 2008 and re-elected with 43.2% in the second ballot. After the cabinet reshuffle in the same month, he was also State Secretary for Defense and Veterans (under Defense Minister Hervé Morin ). In June 2009 he moved to the Ministry of Justice as State Secretary (under Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie ), a position he held until November 2010.

In May 2010, Bockel resigned as Mayor of Mulhouse. However, he remained a member of the municipal council and also became president of the Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération municipal association (successor to CAMSA). In December 2010 he was re-elected to the Senate as representative of the Haut-Rhin department. There he sat at first in the group Rassemblement démocratique et social européen (RDSE), which positions itself in the political center. In June 2011, Bockel's party LGM founded the Alliance républicaine, écologiste et sociale (ARES), an association of small parties of the bourgeoisie, together with the Parti radical valoisien by Jean-Louis Borloo , the Nouveau Center by Hervé Morin and the Convention démocrate by Hervé de Charette Mitte, who had previously been associated with the conservative UMP. He then moved to the Union centriste (et républicaine) parliamentary group.

From 2012 to 2015 Bockel was the French representative in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe . He has also been a French delegate to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly since 2012 . In the 2012 presidential election , he campaigned for Sarkozy to be re-elected (who, however, was defeated by the socialist François Hollande ). The Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI) emerged from the ARES in autumn 2012 , to which Bockel has belonged ever since. He is chairman of the UDI association in the Haut-Rhin department. In September 2017 he resigned as chairman of the La Gauche modern party.

Web links

Commons : Jean-Marie Bockel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marie-Bénédicte Allaire: Jean-Marie Bockel, you socialisme au blairisme. In: RTL Élections 2007 , June 19, 2007.
  2. ↑ a b c Michaela Wiegel: Sarkozy opens his government in all directions. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine , June 19, 2007.
  3. ^ Pour Borloo, "la machine est lancée". In: Le Journal du Dimanche , June 15, 2011.
  4. ^ François Vignal: Le nouveau groupe centriste, Union centriste et républicaine, passe à 31 membres. In: Public Sénat , October 1, 2011.
  5. ^ PACE member file: Jean-Marie BOCKEL , Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
  6. ↑ BOCKEL Jean-Marie, Membre , NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
  7. ↑ Mieux me connaître , www.jeanmariebockel.fr, accessed on January 6, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Bockel, Jean-Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician (La Gauche moderne), member of the National Assembly
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg