Paul-Marie Coûteaux

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Paul-Marie Coûteaux in April 2007

Paul-Marie Coûteaux (born July 31, 1956 in Paris ) a French politician. From 1999 to 2009 he was a member of the European Parliament .

Political career

Paul-Marie Coûteaux is the son of the writer André Couteaux . After studying politics and law, he began his political career as an advisor to various French politicians, including Minister of Commerce Michel Jobert (1981–83), Language Commissioner Philippe de Saint-Robert (1984–87) and Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement (1988–1983) 91). 1992–93 Coûteaux worked as a consultant in the office of the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali .

From 1993 Coûteaux was adviser and speechwriter to the President of the French National Assembly , Philippe Séguin , who from 1997 was also president of the Gaullist party Rassemblement pour la République (RPR). From 1998 Coûteaux was editor-in-chief of the newly founded RPR magazine Une certaine idée . He became known through his essay Traité de savoir-disparaître à l'usage d'une vieille génération , in which he attacks the 68 generation .

Within the RPR, Coûteaux belonged to the sovereignist , Eurosceptic wing, which, among other things, rejected the Maastricht Treaty . In 1999, Coûteaux followed the group around Charles Pasqua , who broke with the RPR, as it no longer adequately represented the legacy of Gaullism under President Jacques Chirac , and founded the sovereignist Rassemblement pour la France (RPF) party. On their list, Coûteaux was elected to the European Parliament in the 1999 European elections . There he sat in the Eurosceptic group Union for Europe of the Nations and was a member of the Committee on Development and Cooperation . However, he left the RPF when it split in the summer of 2000. In March 2001, he moved to the Group for a Europe of Democracies and Differences , of which he was a member from May 2001 onwards. From January 2002 he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defense Policy of the European Parliament . In December 2001, he and Jean-Paul Bled founded the Entente souverainiste party , which in 2003 was renamed Rassemblement pour l'indépendance et la souveraineté de la France (RIF; "Association for the Independence and Sovereignty of France"). In addition, Coûteaux became the head of the sovereign weekly newspaper L'Indépendance .

In the 2004 European elections , Coûteaux was re-elected to the European Parliament, this time on the list of the Mouvement pour la France (MPF) party under Philippe de Villiers . The MPF was a member of the right-wing conservative, Eurosceptic European party Alliance of Independent Democrats in Europe, which was dissolved at the end of 2008 . In the European Parliament, the three MPF MEPs belong to the EP Group for Independence and Democracy . In this Coûteaux was a board member. He was also a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and was a delegate for relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union and in the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly .

In 2005 Coûteaux and the MPF campaigned for a no in the French referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty. In May 2008 he was elected chairman of the small sovereignist party Rassemblement pour l'indépendance et la souveraineté de la France . In February 2009, together with Philippe de Villiers, he announced his membership in the pan-European organization Libertas , which rejects the Lisbon Treaty . By becoming a member of Coûteaux and Villiers, Libertas met the criteria necessary to be recognized as a European political party . In the European elections in France in 2009 , Coûteaux was no longer placed on the list of MPF and Libertas, and discussions with Nicolas Dupont-Aignan did not lead to a nomination by his party, the national-conservative Debout la République . Coûteaux then announced his own candidacy with the RIF party, but then officially withdrew from the election campaign at the end of April 2009 and called for abstention.

In March 2011, Coûteaux called for a partnership of RIF with the far-right National Front under Marine Le Pen and the party Debout la République of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan on. In October 2011, he resigned as chairman of the RIF and became the campaign spokesman for Marine Le Pen's 2012 presidential election . At the end of 2011 he also founded the small party Souveraineté, identité et libertés (SIEL; “Sovereignty, Identity and Freedoms”) as a “Gaullist-sovereignist” partner of Le Pens FN. After Coûteaux distanced himself from Le Pen in April 2014, he was dismissed as chairman of SIEL in June 2014. In the 2017 presidential election , Coûteaux supported François Fillon from the conservative Les Républicains party . In 2018 he acted as an advisor to Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, chairman of the national conservative party Debout la France . For the 2019 European elections , Coûteaux called for the Dupont-Aignans list to be elected. However, he then joined the Parti chrétien-démocrate (PCD).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Coûteaux pour une alliance with the FN. In: Le Figaro , March 30, 2011.
  2. ^ Catherine Rougerie: Porte-parole de Marine Le Pen, Paul-Marie Coûteaux créé un nouveau parti. In: France Info , December 1, 2011.
  3. ↑ Emmanuel Galiero: Le SIEL evince son président Paul-Marie Coûteaux. In: Le Figaro , June 23, 2014.
  4. ↑ Tristan Quinault Maupoil: Le souverainiste Paul-Marie Coûteaux rallie Francois Fillon. In: Le Figaro , January 30, 2017.
  5. ↑ Dans l'ombre de Dupont-Aignan, un trio de conseillers. In: Le Figaro , 23 September 2018.
  6. ^ Paul-Marie Coûteaux: "Pourquoi je voterai Dupont-Aignan". In: Le Figaro , May 23, 2019.
  7. ^ Charles Sapin: Le chantre de l 'union des droites, Paul-Marie Coûteaux, rejoint le Parti Chrétien démocrate. In: Le Figaro , June 27, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Coûteaux, Paul-Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris