Jean-Pierre Raffarin

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Jean-Pierre Raffarin (2013)

Jean-Pierre Raffarin (pronunciation:  [ ʒɑ̃ˈpjɛːʀ ʀafaˈʀɛ̃ ] ; born August 3, 1948 in Poitiers ) is a French politician ( UDF , DL , UMP , Les Républicains ). From 2002 to 2005 he was Prime Minister of France .

education

Jean-Pierre Raffarin is the son of the farmer and CNIP politician Jean Raffarin, who was State Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture in the Pierre Mendès France government from 1954 to 1955 . He studied law at the University of Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) and received his diploma from ESCP Europe (École supérieure de commerce de Paris) in 1972 . There he belonged to the same senior year as his later cabinet colleague Michel Barnier . Raffarin then did an internship of almost a year in the soap factory in Fébor on the Eure .

Career in business

Contrary to the usual pattern of French politicians, Raffarin spent a significant part of his career in the private sector: from 1973 to 1976 he was a member of the marketing directorate of the Jacques Vabre cafés, while he was general secretary of the Giscard Youth. Between 1976 and 1981 he was an employee of the national employment agency ANPE.

When his father withdrew from the Crédit Immobilier Rural de la Vienne mortgage bank , which he founded in 1956, in 1978, Jean-Pierre Raffarin became president. During the 1980s, he benefited from a wave of mergers at his mortgage company that saw him rise from President of Crédit Immobilier de Poitou-Charentes to President of Crédit Immobilier de France Center-Ouest . His mortgage bank is now part of the Crédit Immobilier de France mortgage bank .

Political career

Political party

Raffarin began his political engagement with the Génération sociale et libérale , the youth organization of the conservative-liberal Républicains indépendants of the then President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing . The Parti républicain (PR) emerged from the Républicains indépendants in 1977 , which Raffarin joined in the same year. The PR was part of the civil party alliance Union pour la démocratie française (UDF), of which he was spokesman from 1993 to 1995.

Like Giscard d'Estaing, Raffarin left PR in 1995 after party leader François Léotard ousted all supporters of the ex-president from the top. Instead, Raffarin founded the Parti populaire pour la démocratie française (PPDF), which also belonged to the UDF alliance, with other Giscardiens (including Hervé de Charette ) . In December of the same year Raffarin became Secretary General of the UDF. After the defeat of the bourgeois parties in the 1997 parliamentary elections , the Parti républicain was renamed Démocratie Libérale (DL), which Raffarin also joined and became deputy chairman. Like the DL as a whole, Raffarin did not participate in the transformation of the UDF alliance into a unified party (“Nouvelle UDF”) in 1998.

The Démocratie Libérale merged in November 2002 with the Gaullist RPR as well as smaller parties and independent politicians to form the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) as a gathering party for the center-right camp.

Local and regional policy

In local politics, Raffarin was active as a member of the City Council of Poitiers from 1978 to 1995 , where he belonged to the opposition to the socialist mayor Jacques Santrot . In 1986 he was first elected to the Regional Council of Poitou-Charentes , of which he was President from 1988 to 2002. From 1995 to 2001 he was also deputy mayor of the small town of Chasseneuil-du-Poitou .

European parliamentarians

From 1989 to 1995 he was a member of the European Parliament . There he was initially a member of the Liberal Group . From 1992 to 1994 Raffarin was vice chairman of the budget committee . After the European elections in 1994 , the members of the UDF switched to the parliamentary group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) , of which Raffarin was subsequently a member of the board. As quaestor , he was a member of the parliamentary presidium from 1994 to 1995. In May 1995, Raffarin resigned from the EP to become Minister in Paris.

National politics

From 1995 to 1997 Raffarin was Minister for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Trade and Crafts in the Juppé I and II governments . In September 1995 he was elected to the French Senate , but did not exercise the mandate to concentrate on his government office. He belonged to the second chamber of parliament after the change of government in 1997 until his appointment as Prime Minister in 2002. There he belonged to the liberal group Républicains et Indépendants (RI). 1998–99 he was vice-chairman, then secretary of the Economic Policy Committee.

prime minister

After his re-election and the subsequent resignation of the Jospin government , President Jacques Chirac appointed Jean-Pierre Raffarin as Prime Minister on May 6, 2002, who formed the Raffarin I cabinet . After the parliamentary elections in June 2002 , which the newly founded UMP under the leadership of Chirac and Raffarin was able to win, Raffarin was confirmed in his office and formed the largely unchanged Raffarin II cabinet . Raffarin's politics combined communication , authority and neoliberalism . In 2003, the French government reformed the statutory pension system and implemented decentralization , which sparked many strikes.

On March 28, 2004, his ruling UMP suffered a severe defeat in the regional elections: all mainland regions except Alsace went to the opposition parties PS (socialists) , PCF (communists) and Les Verts (greens) . This was generally perceived, including by Raffarin himself, as a gesture of electorate distrust of his government. Two days later, Raffarin offered President Chirac the resignation of his government. This immediately commissioned Raffarin with the formation of the new government. On March 31, Raffarin presented a new cabinet ( Cabinet Raffarin III ) without those ministers who themselves had confessed to mistakes, such as Luc Ferry or Jean-François Mattei .

During a state visit to the People's Republic of China on April 21, 2005 , Raffarin supported the new anti-secession law - under which the People's Republic authorizes itself to invade independent Taiwan - and continued his campaign for European arms deliveries to the People's Republic of China.

After several thousand old people died in a heat wave in the old people's and nursing homes in the summer of 2003 , all parties came up against proposals for redeveloping care for the elderly . They culminated in an appeal from the President to the solidarity of all to overcome the problems, which the general public welcomed. Raffarin then submitted a law with reference to the legislation on German long-term care insurance (in which the day of penance and prayer was abolished as a public holiday in Germany ), which abolished Whit Monday as a public holiday and burdened the employees, but not the employers. Thirteen days before President Chirac's scheduled referendum on the European Constitution , work began on a Whit Monday for the first time, which did not exactly encourage the referendum to be approved. A million workers in France did not work on Whit Monday, but went on strike.

Two days after the French voted no in the referendum on the EU constitution on May 29, 2005, Raffarin submitted his resignation. The referendum was also used by many French to express displeasure with the government's policies. President Chirac, who himself did not draw any conclusions from the defeat in the vote, therefore intended to reshuffle the government. The unpopular and increasingly exhausted Raffarin did not want to stand in the way and resigned. Chirac, who had expected the resignation and did not want to hold on to Raffarin, accepted the resignation. It has often been suggested that Raffarin was playing the role of the scapegoat . His successor as head of government was the previous Minister of the Interior, Dominique de Villepin .

Raffarin is known for his optimistic aphorisms, ironically referred to as “Raffarinades” (Raffarinades), the best known of which is: “ La route est droite, mais la pente est forte. “(The road is straight, but the incline is steep.)

After serving as prime minister

Raffarin in 2011

Jean-Pierre Raffarin was re-elected to the French Senate in a by-election in September 2005, to which he was a member until his retirement from active politics in October 2017. Raffarin withdrew from the general public, but nevertheless performed numerous appearances for the UMP and the presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy during the 2007 election campaign . After his election as president and a reform of the party committees, Jean-Pierre Raffarin became vice-president of the UMP, with the actual party leadership being with the general secretary of the UMP - at that time Patrick Devedjian . In September 2008, Raffarin applied for the office of President of the Senate, but was defeated in the preliminary vote of the UMP group Gérard Larcher . In February 2010, he turned down Sarkozy's offer to become the French ambassador to China .

For the UMP party congress in November 2012, Raffarin was one of the first signatories of the “France modern et humaniste” program. In the vote on the currents, this received 18 percent of the vote and thus reached 3rd place. In the election of the party president, Raffarin was considered a supporter of Jean-François Copé . After weeks of dispute over the outcome of the election, Raffarin managed to find a compromise between the two candidates for the party presidency on December 16, 2012.

After Jean-François Copé resigned from the UMP party chairmanship on June 15, 2014, Raffarin took over the leadership of the UMP on a provisional basis together with Alain Juppé and François Fillon until Nicolas Sarkozy took over the party chairmanship again in November 2014. Under Sarkozy's leadership, the UMP was renamed Les Républicains in May 2015 . From October 2014 to July 2017, Raffarin was chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and the Armed Forces.

For the 2019 European elections , he declared his support for La République en Marche (LREM), the party of President Emmanuel Macron . Raffarin no longer paid a membership fee at Les Républicains, so his party membership expires at the end of the year. He praised Macron's policy as “the best the country can have”, but does not want to join LREM either, but rather to leave party politics entirely.

Web links

Commons : Jean-Pierre Raffarin  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Wikiquote: Jean-Pierre Raffarin  - Quotes (French)

• Jean-Pierre Raffarin in nndb (English)
• Entry on Jean-Pierre Raffarin in the Members' database of the European Parliament
• Biography (french)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jean-Pierre Raffarin nouveau secrétaire général de l'UDF. In: Liberation , December 19, 1995.
2. ^ Entry on Jean-Pierre Raffarin in the European Parliament 's database of deputies
3. ↑ RAFFARIN Jean-Pierre, Ancien sénateur de la Vienne. French Senate website, accessed May 2, 2019.
4. ^ Samuel Potier: Présidence du Sénat: Larcher asked Raffarin. lefigaro.fr , September 24, 2008, accessed December 17, 2012 (French). 
5. ^ Jean-Pierre Raffarin refuse de s'exiler en Chine. Le Nouvel Observateur , February 10, 2010, accessed December 17, 2012 (French). 
6. ↑ Fillon et Copé s'accordent sur un nouveau vote en septembre. Le Monde .fr, December 16, 2012, accessed December 17, 2012 (French). 
7. ↑ Matthieu Deprieck: L'UMP est maintenant aux mains du trio Juppé Fillon Raffarin. L'Éxpress (online), September 10, 2012, accessed on June 28, 2014 (French). 
8. ↑ "Evidemment" Raffarin quince Les Républicains. In: Le Parisien , October 13, 2019.