Jean-Pierre Bel

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Jean-Pierre Bel (2012)

Jean-Pierre Bel (born December 30, 1951 in Lavaur , Tarn Department , France) is a French politician of the Parti Socialiste (PS) and was President of the French Senate from October 2011 to September 2014 .

Life

Jean-Pierre Bel's family was communist and shaped by the French Resistance . His father was an active member of the Parti communiste français , he and other members of the family had been actively involved in the Resistance during the war. Bel later grew up in Toulouse , where his mother was an employee of the then state-owned postal company PTT . He studied law and was a lecturer at the University of Toulouse I .

Bel's first political engagement was to support Spanish resistance groups against Franco . He was also involved in the Trotskyist Ligue communiste révolutionnaire . In 1978 Bel gave up his job at the University of Toulouse and his political commitment and moved to the home village of his first wife, Mijanès ( Ariège department ) in the Pyrenees . There he was head of the tourism office and responsible for the development of winter sports facilities.

From 1983 he became politically active again and was elected mayor of Mijanès. On the day of his election he joined the Parti Socialiste. From 1986 he was also a member of the Regional Council of the Midi-Pyrénées Region and the General Council of Ariège. In these functions he came into contact with Lionel Jospin , who came from the same region, and for whom he organized his campaign in the regional elections in 1992.

In 1995, Bel resigned from the office of mayor of Mijanès. From 1994 to 2000 he was secretary of the Parti Socialiste at national level, first for the branches, later for the preparation of elections. In 2001 he took over a position as mayor again, this time in the larger municipality of Lavelanet (until 2008).

In 1998 Bel was elected to the Senate for the Ariège department. In 2004 he became chairman of the socialist group there. In 2004 and 2008 he ran for the position of President of the Senate, but was defeated - as expected - in view of the majority situation - in 2004 Christian Poncelet and in 2008 Gérard Larcher from the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP). After the left-wing groups had won a majority in the Senate in the 2011 Senate election, Bel was again proposed as Senate President by the Socialist parliamentary group. On October 1, 2011, he was elected to this office with 179 votes, 134 votes for Gérard Larcher and 29 votes for the centrist Senator Valérie Létard . He was the first socialist ever in this office. As President of the Senate, Bel was also the representative of the state president when he was prevented from exercising his office.

Until his election as Senate President, Bel was largely unknown to the public, but within the Senate he was well networked and thought about a compromise through the political camps. Within the Parti Socialiste, he was assigned to the group around François Hollande and was considered a staunch European.

Bel decided not to run again in the 2014 Senate election and accordingly left parliament on September 30, 2014. His successor as Senate President was his predecessor Gérard Larcher after the left lost the majority in the Senate in the election.

Jean-Pierre Bel is married to a Cuban woman for the second time and has three children. He is a rugby fan and supporter of FC Barcelona .

Fonts

  • Le Sénat à l'heure du changement , Édition Fondation Jean Jaurès, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-36244-022-9 (in German, for example: The Senate in the hour of change )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Patrick Roger: Jean-Pierre Bel, la révolution au Palais. Le Monde.fr, October 1, 2011, archived from the original on October 1, 2011 ; Retrieved January 29, 2013 (French).
  2. ^ Jean-Pierre Bel: "Nous devons changer l'image de notre assemblée". Liberation, October 1, 2011, accessed October 1, 2011 (French).
  3. ↑ a b c Matthieu Deprieck: Qui est Jean-Pierre Bel, le nouveau président du Sénat. L'Éxpress.fr, October 1, 2011, accessed October 1, 2011 (French).
  4. ↑ a b c Nicolas Barotte: Jean-Pierre Bel, un «homme normal". Le Figaro.fr, October 1, 2011, accessed October 1, 2011 (French).
  5. ↑ Le nouveau Président du Sénat. Jean-Pierre Bel élu President du Sénat. (No longer available online.) Senate (France) , October 1, 2011, archived from the original on January 3, 2012 ; Retrieved December 23, 2018 (French).
  6. ↑ a b Michaela Wiegel: Socialist joy of victory. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 27, 2011, accessed on October 2, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Bel, Jean-Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Senator
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Lavaur (Tarn)