Robert Collignon

Robert Collignon (born February 10, 1943 in Villers-le-Bouillet , Province of Liège ) is a Belgian politician of the Parti Socialiste (PS) who was Prime Minister of the Walloon Region between 1994 and 1999 .

Life

Lawyer and MP

Collignon, whose father Emile Collignon member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives and the mayor was from Villers-le-Bouillet, already accepted as a pupil of the great strikes in winter 1960 to 1961 in part that of union functionaries as André Renard and André Genot organized.

After attending school, he studied law at the University of Liege and graduated to lectures by professors such as Fernand Dehousse and François Perin 1967 with the graduation to the Dr. jur. from. His fellow students later included well-known PS politicians such as Yvan Ylieff and Jean Gol, and afterwards he worked as a law lecturer himself for a year .

In 1968 he became press officer for four months in the office of Freddy Terwagne , then Minister for Communal Relations, and then took up a position as a lawyer .

After Freddy Terwagne's death, he was elected as his successor to the Belgian Chamber of Deputies in 1971 and was a member of the Belgian Chamber of Deputies until 1974. After losing his mandate in the 1974 elections, he became involved in local politics and in 1977 was first elected alderman for public education in the city of Amay .

In the meantime he was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1981 and subsequently dealt with institutional problems, but also with issues from economic, legal and foreign policy.

Mayor, Senator and Prime Minister of Wallonia

After he was subsequently alderman for finance in 1983, he became mayor of Amay on May 1, 1987 after the resignation of Maurice Dumongh .

In 1988, Collignon was elected a member of the Senate , where he was chairman of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the Heysel disaster , a mass panic in the context of a European football match. It took place on May 29, 1985 before the final for the 1984/85 National Cup between Liverpool FC and Juventus Turin at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels . As supporters of Liverpool stormed into the neutral sector, panic broke out and a wall collapsed. 39 people were killed and 454 injured.

In addition, he was President of the Parti Socialiste Walloniens and chairman of the PS group in the Senate while he was a member of the Senate. As party chairman, he organized the PS party congress in Ans in 1991 .

In January 1992, Collignon was appointed to the Wallonia government by Prime Minister Guy Spitaels and was Minister for Spatial Planning, Housing and Budget until January 1994.

He then became Prime Minister of the Walloon Region on January 25, 1994 as the successor to Spitaels himself and held this office until he was replaced by Elio Di Rupo on July 15, 1999. In 1995 he was also elected a member of the Walloon Parliament and was from 2000 to 2004 its parliament.

He then took over the office of mayor of Amay again and held this until October 2006. In the subsequent local elections, his son Christophe Collignon was defeated by 2226 to 2900 votes against Jean-Michel Javaux , the candidate of the Ecolo party , who subsequently became mayor of the city has been.

Web links

• Biography in Cent Wallons du siècle , Institut Jules Destrée, Charleroi, 1995
• Belgian Regions and Communities (rulers.org)