Pierre de Villiers

Pierre de Villiers (2015)

Pierre Le Jolis de Villiers de Saintignon (born July 26, 1956 in Boulogne in the Vendée department ) is a French général d'armée and was chief of the French general staff from February 15, 2014 to July 19, 2017 . He resigned after a dispute with President Emmanuel Macron .

Life

Pierre François Marie Le Jolis de Villiers de Saintignon comes from the old French noble family Villiers , which can trace its roots back to the 16th century. He is married and has six children. An older brother is the French politician Philippe de Villiers .

Military career

Promotions

• Sous-lieutenant (1977)
• Lieutenant (1978)
• Capitaine (1982)
• Commandant (1988)
• Colonel lieutenant (1992)
• Colonel (1997)
• General de brigade (2005)
• General de division (2008)
• General de corps d'armée (2009)
• Général d'armée (2010)
• Chef d'État-Major des armées (2014)

In 1975, de Villiers entered the Saint-Cyr Military School to train as an officer. After graduation, deployments in various areas of the French army followed from 1978 to 2003. From September 2003 to June 2004 he attended advanced training for senior officers, and on December 1, 2005, he was promoted to Général de brigade .

With the rank of general between December 2006 and April 2007 he was initially in command of the Regional Command - Capital , one of the five NATO regional commands in Afghanistan. In July 2008 he was promoted to Général de division and shortly thereafter served as military advisor to the Prime Minister. This was quickly followed by promotion to Général de corps d'armée (2009) and Général d'armée (2010) - the latter combined with his appointment as deputy chief of the general staff. On February 15, 2014, he was appointed Chief of the French General Staff to succeed Édouard Guillaud .

On July 19, 2017, he resigned from the post of Chief of Staff after a dispute over austerity measures in the French army. The French President Emmanuel Macron had announced savings for the entire budget of 4.5 billion euros for the current year in order to reach the EU deficit limit of three percent. The defense department accounted for 850 million euros of this. De Villiers stated that he no longer saw himself in a position to guarantee the model of an army that was necessary for “the protection of France and the French”. François Lecointre was appointed to succeed him .

Awards

	Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor
	Officer of the Ordre national du Mérite
	Croix de la Valeur militaire
	Croix du Combattant
	Médaille de la Defense National
	Médaille de la jeunesse et des sports (in bronze)
	Médaille commémorative française
	Order of Merit Pro Merito Melitensi
	NATO medal "Former Yugoslavia"
	NATO medal for use in Kosovo
	NATO medal "ISAF"
	Commandeur de l ' Ordre national du Lion (Senegal, 2014)

Fonts

• Servir . Fayard , Paris 2017, ISBN 978-2-213-70599-6 .
• Qu'est-ce qu'un chef? . Fayard, Paris 2018, ISBN 978-2-213-71166-9 .

literature

• Nadia Pantel: He has what a Macron lacks . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 15, 2019, p. 11

Web links

Commons : Pierre de Villiers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Pierre de Villiers biography and photo on the French Armed Forces website. (French English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Decisions of the Council of Ministers of January 15, 2014: Mesures d'ordre individuel ( Memento of January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Thomas Hanke: French Chief of Staff resigns In: Handelsblatt from July 19, 2017.
3. ^ "France: Chief of Staff Pierre de Villiers resigns". Accessed July 19, 2017. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/frankreich-generalstabschef-pierre-de-villiers-tritt-zurueck-15112766.html .
4. ↑ Communauté Défense, July 1, 2014: Le général d'armée Pierre de Villiers en visite officielle au Sénégal: entretiens officiels et rencontre avec les EFS