François Hollande
François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008, Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008, as well as President of the General Council of Corrèze from 2008 to 2012. He has also held the 1st constituency of Corrèze seat in the National Assembly three times, first from 1988 to 1993, then from 1997 to 2012, and from 2024 onwards.
Born in Rouen and raised in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hollande began his political career as a special advisor to newly-elected President François Mitterrand before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. He became a member of the National Assembly in 1988 and was elected First Secretary of the PS in 1997. Following the 2004 regional elections won by the PS, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but he resigned as First Secretary and was immediately elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as President of the General Council of Corrèze in 2008. In 2011, Hollande announced that he would be a candidate in the primary election to select the PS presidential nominee; he won the nomination against Martine Aubry before he was elected to the presidency on 6 May 2012 in the second round with 51.6% of the vote, defeating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.
During his tenure, Hollande legalised same-sex marriage by passing Bill no. 344, reformed labour laws and credit training programmes, signed a law restricting the cumul des mandats, and withdrew French forces in Afghanistan, in addition to concluding an EU directive on the protection of animals in laboratory research through a Franco-German contract. Hollande led the country through the January and November 2015 Paris attacks, as well as the 2016 Nice attack. He was a leading proponent of EU mandatory migrant quotas and NATO's 2011 military intervention in Libya. He also sent troops to Mali and the Central African Republic with the approval of the UN Security Council in order to stabilise those countries, two operations however largely seen as failures. He drew controversy among his left-wing electoral base for supporting the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.
Under Hollande's presidency, Paris hosted the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and his efforts to bring the 2024 Summer Olympics to the city were successful. However, with domestic troubles – in particular due to Islamic terrorism – over the course of his tenure, and unemployment rising to 10%, he faced spikes and downturns in approval rates, ultimately making him the most unpopular head of state under the Fifth Republic. On 1 December 2016, he announced he would not seek reelection in the 2017 presidential election, for which polls suggested his defeat in the first round.
Early life and education
Hollande was born on 12 August 1954 in Rouen. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert, was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, was an ear, nose, and throat doctor, who "ran for local election on a far right ticket in 1959". The name "Hollande" meant "one originally from Holland" – it is mostly found in Hollande's ancestral land, Hauts-de-France, and it is speculated to be Dutch in origin. The earliest known member of the Hollande family lived near Plouvain, working as a miller.When Hollande was thirteen, the family moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a highly exclusive suburb of Paris. He attended Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle boarding school, a private Catholic school in Rouen, the Lycée Pasteur, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, receiving his baccalaureate in 1972 then graduated with a bachelor's degree in Law from Panthéon-Assas University. Hollande studied at HEC Paris, graduated in 1975, and then attended the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration. He completed his military service in the French Army in 1977. He graduated from the ENA in 1980, and chose to enter the prestigious Cour des comptes.
Hollande lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 while he was a university student. Immediately after graduation, he was employed as a councillor in the Court of Audit.
Early political career
Five years after volunteering as a student to work for François Mitterrand's ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election, Hollande joined the Socialist Party. He was quickly spotted by Jacques Attali, a senior adviser to Mitterrand, who arranged for Hollande to run in legislative election of 1981 in Corrèze against future President Jacques Chirac, who was then the leader of the Rally for the Republic, a Neo-Gaullist party. Hollande lost to Chirac in the first round.He went on to become a special advisor to newly elected President Mitterrand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. After becoming a municipal councillor for Ussel in 1983, he contested Corrèze for a second time in 1988, this time being elected to the National Assembly. Hollande lost his bid for re-election to the Assembly in the so-called "blue wave" of the 1993 election, described as such due to the number of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.
First Secretary of the Socialist Party (1997–2008)
As the end of Mitterrand's term in office approached, the Socialist Party was torn by a struggle of internal factions, each seeking to influence the direction of the party. Hollande pleaded for reconciliation and for the party to unite behind Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission, but Delors renounced his ambitions to run for the French presidency in 1995. Former party leader Lionel Jospin resumed his position, and selected Hollande to become the official party spokesman. Hollande went on to contest Corrèze once again in 1997, successfully returning to the National Assembly.That same year, Jospin became the Prime Minister of France, and Hollande won the election for his successor as First Secretary of the party, a position he would hold for eleven years. Because of the very strong position of the Socialist Party within the French government during this period, Hollande's position led some to refer to him the "Vice Prime Minister". Hollande would go on to be elected mayor of Tulle in 2001, an office he would hold for the next seven years.
The immediate resignation of Jospin from politics following his shock defeat by far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election forced Hollande to become the public face of the party for the 2002 legislative election. Although he managed to limit defeats and was re-elected in his own constituency, the Socialists lost nationally. In order to prepare for the 2003 party congress in Dijon, he obtained the support of many notable personalities of the party and was re-elected first secretary against opposition from left-wing factions.
After the triumph of the Left in the 2004 regional elections, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but the Socialists were divided on the European Constitution, and Hollande's support for the ill-fated "Yes" position in the French referendum on the European constitution caused friction within the party. Although Hollande was re-elected as first secretary at the Le Mans Congress in 2005, his authority over the party began to decline. Eventually his domestic partner, Ségolène Royal, was chosen to represent the party in the 2007 presidential election, where she would lose to Nicolas Sarkozy.
Hollande was widely blamed for the poor performances of the Socialist Party in the 2007 elections, and he announced that he would not seek another term as First Secretary. Hollande publicly declared his support for Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, but it was Martine Aubry who would go on to win the race to succeed him in 2008. Hollande was next elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as the president of the General Council of Corrèze in April 2008, and won re-election in 2011.
2012 presidential campaign
Hollande announced in early 2011 that he would be a candidate in the upcoming primary election to select the Socialist and Radical Left Party presidential nominee. The primary marked the first time that both parties had held an open primary to select a joint nominee at the same time. He initially trailed the front-runner, former finance minister and International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Following Strauss-Kahn's arrest on suspicion of sexual assault in New York City in May 2011, Hollande began to lead the opinion polls, and his position as front-runner was established just as Strauss-Kahn declared that he would no longer seek the nomination. After a series of televised debates with other candidates throughout September, Hollande topped the ballot in the first round held on 9 October with 39% of the vote. He did not, however, gain the 50% required to avoid a run-off election, and was obliged to enter a second ballot against Martine Aubry, who had come in second with 30% of the vote.The second ballot took place on 16 October 2011. Hollande won with 56% of the vote to Aubry's 43% and thus became the official Socialist and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election. All his main opponents in the primary – Aubry, Ségolène Royal, Arnaud Montebourg, and Manuel Valls – pledged their support to him for the general election.
Hollande's presidential campaign was managed by Pierre Moscovici and Stéphane Le Foll, a member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament respectively. Hollande launched his campaign officially with a rally and major speech at Le Bourget on 22 January 2012 in front of 25,000 people. The main themes of his speech were equality and the regulation of finance, both of which he promised to make a key part of his campaign.
On 26 January, he outlined a full list of policies in a manifesto containing 60 propositions, including the separation of retail activities from riskier investment-banking businesses; raising taxes on big corporations, banks and the wealthy; creating 60,000 teaching jobs; bringing the official retirement age back down to 60 from 62; creating subsidised jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young; promoting more industry in France by creating a public investment bank; granting marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples; and pulling French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012. On 9 February, he detailed his policies specifically relating to education in a major speech in Orléans.
Incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on 15 February that he would run for a second and final term, strongly criticising the Socialist proposals and claiming that Hollande would bring about "economic disaster within two days of taking office". Opinion polls showed a tight race between the two men in the first round of voting, with most polls showing Hollande comfortably ahead of Sarkozy in a hypothetical second round. The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April. François Hollande came in first place with 28.63% of the vote, and faced Nicolas Sarkozy in a run-off. In the second round of voting on 6 May 2012, Hollande was elected with 51.6% of the vote.