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Alain Juppé
Alain Marie Juppé (born 15 August 1945) is a French right-wing politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997, under President Jacques Chirac. In December 2004 Juppé was convicted of mishandling public funds; his political career was subsequently suspended until he was re-elected as Mayor of Bordeaux in October 2006. He was briefly Minister of State for Ecology and Sustainable Development in 2007, but resigned in June 2007 after failing in his bid to be re-elected in the 2007 legislative election. He remains Mayor of Bordeaux.

Early life

Alain Juppé was born in the commune of Mont-de-Marsan in the department of Landes in south-west France.

Education

Member of National Assembly

Alain Juppé's profession, outside of politics, is Inspector of Finances, a position from which he was on leave to hold his various elected and appointed offices. He retired from the Inspection of Finances on 1 January 2003.

As a senior civil servant, he met Jacques Chirac at the end of the 1970s and became his adviser in the city council of Paris. He was minister of budget and spokesperson of Jacques Chirac's government from 1986 to 1988. Then, he was secretary general of the Rally for the Republic (Rassemblement pour la République or RPR) political party from 1988 to 1995. In 1993, he was made Édouard Balladur's Foreign Minister.

Prime Minister

Because he supported Jacques Chirac against Edouard Balladur during the 1995 presidential campaign, he succeeded him as Prime Minister, also becoming president of the RPR. Jacques Chirac claimed Alain Juppé was "the best among us".

However, in November/December 1995, his plan for Welfare State reform caused the biggest social conflict since May 68 and, under duress, abandoned it. He became the most unpopular Prime minister of the Fifth Republic (challenged only by Édith Cresson). In spring 1997, President Chirac dissolved the National Assembly but lost the legislative election. Alain Juppé was succeeded by the Socialist Lionel Jospin. Furthermore, Juppé left the leadership of the RPR.

He campaigned for the unification of all the parties of the centre right behind Jacques Chirac. In this, he was considered the architect of the Union for the Presidential Majority which became the Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un mouvement populaire or UMP), and was its first president from 2002 to 2004.

As a member of the National Assembly (as representative of Paris from 1986 to 1997, then representative of Gironde), he was elected Mayor of Bordeaux in 1995, succeeding former Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

Criminal conviction

In 2004, Alain Juppé was tried for the felony of abuse of public funds, when he was head of the RPR and the RPR illegally used personnel provided by the City of Paris for running its operations. He was convicted and sentenced to an 18-month suspended jail sentence, the deprivation of civic rights for five years, and the deprivation of the right to run for political office for 10 years. He appealed against the decision, whereby his disqualification from holding elected office was reduced to one year and the suspended sentence cut to 14 months. He announced he would not appeal the ruling before the Court of Cassation. (See Corruption scandals in the Paris region) As a consequence, Alain Juppé resigned his mayorship of Bordeaux and his position of head of the Bordeaux urban community.

The court commented:

It is regrettable that at the time when the legislative body became aware of the need to end criminal practices which existed for the financing of political parties, Mr Juppé did not apply to his own party the very rules that he had voted for in Parliament.
It is equally regrettable that Mr Juppé, whose intellectual qualities are unanimously recognized, did not judge appropriate to assume before Justice his entire criminal responsibility and kept on denying established facts.
However, Mr Juppé has given himself for many years to the service of the State, while he did obtain no personal enrichment from these crimes he committed for the benefit of his political party, for which he should not be a scapegoat.

Some commentators, such as Jean-Marc Ayrault, head of the National Assembly group of the Socialist Party, have argued that Juppé, in this judicial group, paid for a wider responsibility than his own.

Some law professors argued that the Versailles court could not legally exempt Juppé from a disposition of the Electoral Code (article L7) which bars any person sentenced for illegal taking of interests from being on an electoral roll for a period of 5 years, also preventing that person from running for office. Another disposition of the Electoral Code (article LO130) specifies that any person deprived of the right to be on an electoral roll for a certain period following a judicial sentence is deprived of the right of running for the French National Assembly for double that period, which would bar Juppé for 10 years. When Alain Juppé registered again as a voter, other voters sued to have his registration cancelled; however, the Bordeaux court of small claims ruled against them. Some of the plaintiffs declared they would appeal the decision before the Court of Cassation. Another possible issue is that should Alain Juppé be elected to national office, the Constitutional Council could cancel the election on grounds that Juppé was illegally registered as a voter. President Jacques Chirac could have used his right of pardon in favor of Juppé, but this would have probably been politically disastrous. (Le Canard Enchaîné, 22 December 2004).

Juppé considered giving classes on public administration at a variety of prominent United States and Quebec universities and colleges, including the UQÀM in Montreal, some of which were initially receptive to having a former prime minister be a member of their faculty. However, following Juppé's conviction, his appointment was contested by some teachers. Juppé was finally taken in by the École nationale d'administration publique in Montreal where he served as a full-time faculty member for the academic year 2005-2006.

Further political career

Juppé was re-elected as Mayor of Bordeaux in October 2006, suggesting that voters had forgiven him for the conviction.

In May 2007, he was appointed Minister of State, Minister of Ecology and Sustainable Development in the Government of François Fillon, being in fact the number two of the Government in protocolar order. This is the third time in the history of Fifth Republic (after Michel Debré and Laurent Fabius) that a former Prime Minister returned as a Minister in another government (although some Presidents of the Council of the Fourth Republic were Ministers of the Fifth Republic).

Juppé ran unsuccessfully in the 2007 legislative elections, and as a consequence announced his resignation from the government. Prime Minister Fillon had announced that all ministers that chose to run in these elections and were beaten would have to leave the government, for it meant that these ministers did not enjoy the confidence of the people.

On 9 March 2008, Juppé was reelected as Mayor of Bordeaux, winning 56% of the popular vote in the first round.

Juppé's first cabinet, 18 May - 7 November 1995

Changes

  • 25 August 1995 - Jean Arthuis succeeds Madelin as Minister of Economy and Finance, remaining also Minister of Planning.

Juppé's second cabinet, 7 November 1995 - 4 June 1997

References

Videos

External links

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Last updated on Thursday September 18, 2008 at 21:00:11 PDT (GMT -0700)
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