Pierre Méhaignerie

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Pierre Méhaignerie (2011)

Pierre Méhaignerie (born May 4, 1939 in Balazé , Ille-et-Vilaine , Brittany ) is a French politician and former Minister of Justice.

Life

Méhaignerie comes from a political dynasty: his father and grandfather were mayors of Balazé and members of the general council of the Ille-et-Vilaine department. The father was also a member of the National Assembly from 1945 to 1968 as a representative of the Christian Democratic People's Republican Movement (MRP).

Méhaignerie is married and has two children.

Political party

Méhaignerie began his political career as a member of the Center démocratie et progrès (CDP), a successor party to the MRP under the leadership of Jacques Duhamel . The CDP was merged in 1978 in the new Christian Democratic party Center des démocrates sociaux (CDS). This in turn was part of the bourgeois party alliance Union pour la démocratie française (UDF), which supported President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing . After the change of government from the bourgeois to the left camp, Méhaignerie was party leader of the CDS from 1982 to 1994. His party was absorbed into the Force démocrate in 1995 and in the Nouvelle UDF in 1998 (which was no party alliance, but a single party).

When Jacques Chirac initiated the establishment of a large right-of-center collecting party in 2002, Méhaignerie left the UDF and joined Chirac's Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP). From 2004 to 2007 he was general secretary of the party. He left the UMP in 2012 and joined the more centrally positioned Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI).

Departmental, regional and local politics

In 1976 Méhaignerie was elected to the General Council of his home department of Ille-et-Vilaine. From 1982 to 2001 he was President of the General Council. He also represented Ille-et-Vilaine from 1986 to 1988 in the Regional Council of Brittany .

Since 1977 he has been mayor of the small town of Vitré without interruption . The mayor's office of smaller cities in France could be combined with political offices at national and departmental level until 2017. Since 2002 Vitré joined a number of smaller municipalities to form a community association, Méhaignerie has also acted as President of the Vitré Communauté .

National politics

When his father left politics in 1968, Pierre Méhaignerie wanted to succeed as a member of his constituency, but was subject to the candidate of the Gaullist UDR . In the parliamentary elections in 1973 Méhaignerie was able to replace this and moved into the National Assembly. He was a member of this until he entered the government in 1976.

In January 1976 Méhaignerie was appointed State Secretary in the Chirac I cabinet in the Ministry of Agriculture . Under Prime Minister Raymond Barre , Méhaignerie was promoted to Minister of Agriculture in 1977, which he held until 1981. From 1986 to 1988 he was Minister for Construction and Transport in Chirac's second cabinet .

From 1993 to 1995 Méhaignerie took over the office of Minister of Justice under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur . In this function, he and Simone Veil protested sharply against a legislative initiative from the ranks of the conservative coalition partner RPR as part of the "zero immigration policy" of Interior Minister Charles Pasqua . This law would have allowed the police to carry out identity checks on anyone who showed "signs" of being a foreigner.

In the times when he was not a minister (1981–86, 1988–93 and 1995–2012) he again represented the Ille-et-Vilaine department in the National Assembly as a member of parliament .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean-François Sirinelli (ed.): La vie politique française au XX e siècle. Presses Universitaires de France, 1995, entry Méhaignerie , p. 651.
  2. ^ Bruno Béthouart: Le Mouvement Républicain Populaire. L'entrée des catholiques dans la République française. In: Michael Gehler u. a .: Christian Democracy in Europe in the 20th Century. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2001, pp. 313–331, on p. 329.
  3. ^ Pierre Méhaignerie quitte l'UMP pour l'UDI de Jean-Louis Borloo. In: Le Monde (online), November 20, 2012.
  4. ^ Roger Cohen: French Immigration Curbs Provoke Cabinet Rift. In: The New York Times , June 23, 1993.
personal data
SURNAME Méhaignerie, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Balazé , Ille-et-Vilaine department