Roger Frey

Roger Frey (born June 11, 1913 in Nouméa , New Caledonia , † September 13, 1997 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , Hauts-de-Seine department ) was a French politician of the Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR), a member of the National Assembly and was a minister several times. During his tenure as Minister of the Interior , the massacre occurred on February 8, 1962 in the Charonne metro station , in which nine people were killed. Between 1974 and 1983 he was President of the Conseil constitutionnel , the constitutional court of France.

Life

Professional and political career in the Fourth Republic

Frey, whose father François Frey was Inspector General of the metallurgical company Société Le Nickel , completed his school education at the Collège Stanislas in Paris. Between 1936 and 1939 he was the manager of the family nickel business in New Caledonia. In 1940 he entered the of Charles de Gaulle founded Forces françaises libres at (FFF) and engaged in the Pacific - battalion . He was a delegate on a mission to US General Douglas MacArthur and also took part in combat operations in Germany and Austria as well as in a mission in China with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai .

In 1947 Frey joined the Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) founded by de Gaulle and was initially a member of the management committee and, in 1951, treasurer of this Gaullist party. In 1952 he also became a member of the Assembly of the Union française , an organization founded in 1946 with the aim of reshaping the French colonial empire on the model of the British Commonwealth of Nations . In 1955 he became general secretary of the Union des républicains d'action sociale (URAS), which emerged from the RPF . In the following years he worked closely with Jacques Soustelle and took an active part in preparing for de Gaulle's return to power after the military coup in Algeria on May 13, 1958 and the resulting May crisis. At that time he also became a member of the Consultative Constitutional Committee (Comité consultatif constitutionnel) and first Secretary General of the Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR) and cabinet attaché to Information Minister Soustelle.

Fifth Republic

Interior minister and the massacre in the Charonne metro station

Memorial plaque to the massacre in the Charonne metro station

After the founding of the Fifth Republic on October 5, 1958 Frey was on January 8, 1959 by Prime Minister Michel Debré in the Cabinet appointed and took over first himself the post of Information Minister (Ministre de l'information) , and then as part of a Cabinet reshuffle on the 5th February 1960 the post of Minister Assistant to the Prime Minister (Ministre délégué près le Premier Ministre) .

In a new government reshuffle, Frey became Minister of the Interior (Ministre de l'Intérieur) on May 6, 1961 by Prime Minister Debre as successor to Pierre Chatenet . He held this ministerial office in the Debre cabinet and in the subsequent first , second and third government of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou until April 6, 1967.

During his tenure as Minister of the Interior, on February 8, 1962, on the sidelines of a demonstration against the Algerian war, the massacre in the Charonne metro station , in which nine people were killed. Maurice Papon , then Police Prefect of Paris, had given the order, with the agreement of Interior Minister Frey and President de Gaulle, to prevent and break up the demonstration. Some of the crowd fled to the Charonne metro station. Several people fell on the entrance stairs and were crushed by the crowd, others were killed by metal bars thrown by the police. There were eight dead and one seriously injured who later died in hospital. On June 12, 1963, as Minister of the Interior, together with President de Gaulle and Minister of Information Alain Peyrefitte, he visited the Mémorial de la Résistance , a memorial and national cemetery in the French community of Chasseneuil-sur-Bonnieure , which was in memory of the after the end of the Second World War more than a thousand fallen Resistance fighters from the departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime was erected.

Member of the National Assembly and Minister of State

In the elections of November 18, 1962, Frey was elected as a candidate for the UNR-UDT (Union pour la Nouvelle République) for the first time as a member of the National Assembly and initially represented the Seine department until January 6, 1963 . On March 12, 1967, he was re-elected as a member of the National Assembly and now represented the interests of the eleventh constituency of Paris for the Union des Démocrates pour la Ve République (UDR), although this time too, due to his ministerial office, he held the mandate on May 7, 1967 let rest. As early as April 7, 1967, Frey was appointed by Prime Minister Pompidou to his fourth cabinet , where he was Minister of State for relations with Parliament until May 31, 1968 (Ministre d'État chargé des relations avec le Parlement) .

On June 30, 1968 he was re-elected a member of the National Assembly for the Union des démocrates pour la République (UDR) for Paris and resigned from his mandate on August 12, 1968 due to his ministerial office. Shortly before that, on July 12, 1968, Prime Minister Maurice Couve de Murville reappointed him as Minister of State for relations with Parliament in his government and held this ministerial office in the cabinet of his successor Jacques Chaban-Delmas until January 7, 1971. On January 7, 1971, this ministerial office was abolished and instead Frey served from January 7, 1971 to July 5, 1972 in the Chaban-Delmas cabinet as Minister of State for Administrative Reforms (Ministre d'État, chargé des réformes administratives) .

President of the Conseil constitutionnel

In the elections of March 11, 1973 Frey was again elected to the UDR in the eleventh constituency of Paris as a member of the National Assembly and resigned on March 4, 1974. During this legislative period he was chairman of the parliamentary group of the UDR and, one after the other, a member of the Committee on Constitutional Law, Legislation and General Administration of the Republic (Commission des lois constitutionnelles, de la législation et de l'administration générale de la République) , the Committee on Culture, Family and Social Affairs (Commission des affaires culturelles, familiales et sociales) and, most recently, the Foreign Affairs Committee (Commission des affaires étrangères) .

The reason for his resignation was his appointment as a member of the Conseil constitutionnel, the constitutional court of France, on February 23, 1974. Two days later he was appointed President of the Court constitutionel to succeed Gaston Palewski . He held this position for nine years before being replaced by Daniel Mayer in 1993 .

Frey is the grandfather of the director and screenwriter Xavier Giannoli , a son of his daughter Marianne Frey and the journalist Paul Giannoli.

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly
• French Ministeries (rulers.org)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Debré cabinet
2. ↑ Pompidou I cabinet
3. ↑ Pompidou II cabinet
4. ↑ Pompidou III cabinet
5. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (2nd legislative period)
6. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (3rd legislative period)
7. ↑ Pompidou IV cabinet
8. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (4th legislative period)
9. ↑ Couve de Murville cabinet
10. ↑ Chaban-Delmas cabinet
11. ↑ French Ministeries (rulers.org)
12. ↑ Eric Roussel: Georges Pompidou , 2004
13. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (4th legislative period)