Everything about Lionel Jospin totally explained
Lionel Jospin (born
12 July 1937) is a
French politician who served as
Prime Minister of France, during the third "
cohabitation", under
Jacques Chirac, from
1997 to
2002.
Jospin was the
French Socialist Party candidate for
President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final
runoff election by
Jacques Chirac in 1995. In 2002 he was stunningly eliminated in the first round after finishing behind both Chirac and the far-right candidate
Jean-Marie Le Pen, and immediately announced his retirement from politics, although he briefly campaigned for the 2007 party nomination in the autumn of 2006.
Early life
Lionel Jospin was born to a
Protestant family in
Meudon, a suburb of
Paris. He studied at
Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the
École nationale d'administration (ENA). He was active in the
UNEF students' union, protesting against the
war in Algeria (1954-62).
Member of National Assembly
After his graduation from the ENA in 1965, he entered the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs as secretary of Foreign Affairs. He became in charge of economical cooperation there, and worked with
Ernest-Antoine Seillière, future leader of the
MEDEF employers' union.
Representative of a generation of left-wingers who criticized the old Socialist party
SFIO, he joined a
Trotskyist group, the
Internationalist Communist Organization (OCI) in the 1960s, before entering the renewed
Socialist Party (PS) in 1971. Integrating
François Mitterrand's circle, he became the second highest-ranking member of the party in 1979, then its leader when Mitterrand was elected President of France in 1981. When President Mitterrand decided, in 1982-1983, to change his economic policy in giving the priority at the struggle against inflation and for a hard currency, Jospin justified his choice, as First Secretary of the PS, in saying the Socialist power open just a "parenthesis". In 1984, when
Laurent Fabius was chosen as Prime minister, a rivalry appeared between these two political heirs of Mitterrand. It broke out when they competed for the leadership of the
1986 legislative campaign.
In government
In 1988, after Mitterrand's
re-election, he left the PS leadership, and, though the President considered naming him Prime Minister, he was nominated
Minister of Education. His rivalry with Fabius intensified. It caused an internal crisis, notably during the
Rennes Congress (1990), and damaged his relation with Mitterrand. After the failure of the Socialist Party at the March 1992 local elections, Jospin wasn't included in the new government formed by
Pierre Bérégovoy.
As a member of the National Assembly, Jospin served first as a representative of
Paris (1978-86), and then of
Haute-Garonne département (1986-88). Jospin lost his seat in the National Assembly in the Socialists' landslide defeat in the
1993 legislative election and announced his political retirement.
Finally, he came back and claimed the necessity to "take stock" of the
mitterrandist inheritance so as to restore the credibility of the Socialist Party. In this, he was selected to be the Socialist candidate for President in 1995, against the PS leader
Henri Emmanuelli. Following the Socialists' landslide defeats of 1992-1994, Jospin was considered to have little chance of victory. But he did surprisingly well, leading the first round and losing only very narrowly to Jacques Chirac in the final runnoff election. Despite defeat, his performance was seen to mark a revival of the Socialists as a strong force in French politics and he returned to being the First Secretary of the party
He built a new coalition with the other left-wing parties: the
French Communist Party, the
Greens, the
Left Radical Party and the dissident
Citizen and Republican Movement. Two years later, Chirac decided to call an early election for the National Assembly, hoping for a personal endorsement. But the move backfired as the "
Plural Left" obtained a parliamentary majority and Jospin became Prime Minister.
Member of the
Club of Madrid(External Link
).
Prime Minister
Despite his previous image as a rigid socialist, Jospin went on selling state-owned enterprises, lowered the
VAT rate, income tax and company tax.
His government also introduced the
35-hour workweek, provided additional health insurance for those on lowest incomes, promoted the representation of women in politics, and created the
PACS - a
civil partnership or union between two people, whether of opposite genders or not. During his term, with the help of a favorable economic situation, unemployment fell by 900,000. There were several women but no members of ethnic minorities in Jospin's government.
Jospin mostly steered clear of foreign policies during his ministerial positions. However, in 2000, he denounced
Hezbollah's "terrorist attacks against
Israeli soldiers and civilian populations", a position markedly more pro-Israel than that of president Chirac. On February 26, when visiting
Birzeit University, stones were thrown at him by
Palestinian students, resulting in a minor injury.
(External Link)
Jospin was a candidate in the
presidential campaign of 2002. While he appeared to have momentum in the early stages, the campaign came to be focused mainly on law-and-order issues, in which, it was argued, the government hadn't achieved convincing results; this coincided with a strong focus of the media on a number of egregious crime cases. The Prime Minister was also strongly criticized by the far left for his moderate economic policies, which, they contended, were not markedly different from that of a right-wing government favoring businesses and free markets. Many left-wing candidates contested the election, gaining small percentages of the vote in the first ballot, chipping away at Jospin's support. As a result, Jospin narrowly polled in third place, behind Chirac and the
Front National leader
Jean-Marie Le Pen, and thus didn't go through to the runoff second round of voting.
Following his defeat in April 2002, Jospin immediately declared his decision to leave politics and stepped down as Prime Minister. He has since made episodic comments on current political affairs; for instance, he declared his opposition to
same-sex marriage. In 2005, he returned to the national political scene by campaigning forcefully in favor of the proposed
European Constitution.
In autumn 2006, he declared he was "available" to be the Socialist candidate to the
2007 presidential election. However with
Ségolène Royal looking to win it, Jospin renounced his candidacy in order not to "divide the party".
Personal life
On
5 June 2001, Lionel Jospin confessed before the Parliament that he'd maintained links with a
trotskyist formation "in the 1960s" and had maintained links with
Pierre Lambert's party (the
Internationalist Communist Organization, OCI) after his entrance in the Socialist Party in 1971 . Jospin was recruited into the OCI, when he was studying at the ENA, by
Boris Fraenkel, one of the founder of the OCI. He became an active member of the OCI after quitting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1968, under the pseudonym of "Michel." Although he declined to locate with precision his rupture with the Lambertists,
Le Monde newspaper alleged it was in 1986-87, a year before becoming minister, while Lambert himself implicitly situated it in 1988 .
Jospin had concealed before this relationship with the OCI, which followed a strategy of
entrism into other parties, and specifically denied it when asked about it later (he claimed in 1995 that this rumor came from a confusion with his brother Olivier
[). In 2001, investigative journalists and successive revelations by former Communist associates showed him to have been lying, and he confessed the truth. Having lied hurt him politically more than having been in a cell of the revolutionary left, and the political damage wasn't severe or long-lasting in France — where a number of left-wing and right-wing politicians have been found to have had stints with radical groups in their youth, then later denying them or blaming them on youthful indiscretion (see Occident, Alain Madelin for instance).
Changes
20 October 1998 - Jean Glavany succeeds Le Pensec as Minister of Agriculture and Forests.
2 November 1999 - Christian Sautter succeeds Strauss-Kahn as Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry.
28 March 2000 - Laurent Fabius succeeds Sautter as Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry. Jack Lang succeeds Allègre as Minister of National Education, while Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg succeeds him as Minister of Research and Technology. Catherine Tasca succeeds Trautmann as Minister of Culture and Communication. Michel Sapin succeeds Zuccarelli as Minister of Civil Service and Reform of the State.
29 August 2000 - Daniel Vaillant succeeds Chevènement as Minister of the Interior. Jean-Jack Queyranne succeeds Vaillant as Minister of Relations with Parliament.
18 October 2000 - Elisabeth Guigou succeeds Aubry as Minister of Employment and Solidarity. Marylise Lebranchu succeeds Guigou as Minister of Justice.
10 July 2001 - Yves Cochet succeeds Voynet as Minister of Environment and Regional Planning.
25 February 2002 - François Patriat succeeds Glavany as Minister of Agriculture and Forests.Further Information]
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