Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa is a French former politician and convicted criminal who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012.
Born in Paris, his roots are half Hungarian Protestant, a quarter Greek Jewish, and a quarter French Catholic. Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine from 1983 to 2002, he was Minister of the Budget under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur during François Mitterrand's second term. During Jacques Chirac's second presidential term, he served as Minister of the Interior and as Minister of Finances. He was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement party from 2004 to 2007.
He won the 2007 French presidential election by a 53.1% to 46.9% margin against Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate. During his term, he faced the 2008 financial crisis, the late-2000s recession, and the European sovereign debt crisis, the Russo-Georgian War, and the Arab Spring. He initiated the reform of French universities and the pension reform. He married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni in 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. In the 2012 presidential election, Sarkozy was defeated by the PS candidate François Hollande by a 3.2% margin. After leaving office, Sarkozy pledged to retire but returned in 2014 as UMP leader. After defeat in the Republican presidential primary in 2016, he retired from public life.
He was charged with corruption by French prosecutors in two cases, notably concerning the alleged Libyan interference in the 2007 French elections. In 2021, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption in two separate trials, receiving a three-year sentence and a one-year sentence served under home confinement. He lost an appeal in May 2023. In February 2024, his campaign finance sentence was revised to six months in prison and six months suspended. In September 2025, he was convicted of criminal conspiracy over his "corruption pact" with Muammar Gaddafi and sentenced to five years in prison, plus a €100,000 fine. As of 21 October 2025, Sarkozy commenced his sentence at La Santé Prison, in segregation, while lawyers appeal. He was released three weeks into his five year sentence on 10 November. One of the conditions of Sarkozy's release is that he must not make contact with any employees of the justice ministry.
Personal life
Family background
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa was born on 28 January 1955 in Paris. He is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, a Protestant Hungarian aristocrat, and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah, whose Ottoman Greek Jewish father converted to Catholicism to marry Sarkozy's French Catholic maternal grandmother. They were married in the Saint-François-de-Sales church, 17th arrondissement of Paris, on 8 February 1950, and divorced in 1959.Early life
During Sarkozy's childhood, his father founded his own advertising agency and became wealthy. The family lived in a mansion owned by Sarkozy's maternal grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France région immediately west of Paris. According to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. Sarkozy was raised Catholic.Sarkozy said that being kept at a distance by his father shaped much of who he is today. He also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior to his wealthier and taller classmates. He has spoken about the difficulties he faced as a child of divorced parents at a time when divorce was uncommon. "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood", he said later.
Education
Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a well-regarded public middle and high school in Paris' 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième. His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre student, but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973.Sarkozy enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated with an M.A. in private law and, later, with a D.E.A. degree in business law. Paris X Nanterre had been the starting place for the May '68 student movement and was still a stronghold of leftist students. Described as a quiet student, Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing student organisation, in which he was very active. He completed his military service as a part-time Air Force cleaner.
After graduating from university, Sarkozy entered Sciences Po, where he studied between 1979 and 1981, but failed to graduate due to an insufficient command of the English language.
After passing the bar, Sarkozy became a lawyer specialising in business and family law and was one of Silvio Berlusconi's French lawyers.
Marriages
Marie-Dominique Culioli
Sarkozy married his first wife, Marie-Dominique Culioli, on 23 September 1982, with prominent right-wing politician Charles Pasqua serving as best man. Culioli's father was a pharmacist from Vico ; her uncle was Achille Peretti, the mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine from 1947 to 1983 and Sarkozy's political mentor. They had two sons, Pierre, now a hip-hop producer, and Jean, now a local politician in the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where Sarkozy started his own political career. Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, after they had been separated for several years.Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz
As mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Sarkozy met former fashion model and public relations executive Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, when he officiated at her wedding to television host Jacques Martin. In 1988, she left her husband for Sarkozy, and divorced one year later. She and Sarkozy married in October 1996, with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault. They have one son, Louis, born 28 April 1997.Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Cécilia Sarkozy acting as the chief aide for her husband. On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that she had left Sarkozy for Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New York. There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin, which led to Sarkozy suing the paper. In the meantime, he was said to have had an affair with a journalist of Le Figaro, Anne Fulda.
Sarkozy and Cécilia ultimately divorced on 15 October 2007, soon after his election as president.
Carla Bruni
Less than a month after separating from Cécilia, Sarkozy met Italian-born singer, songwriter and former fashion model Carla Bruni at a dinner party, and soon entered into a relationship with her. They married on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.The couple have a daughter, Giulia, born on 19 October 2011. It was the first time a French president has publicly had a child while in office.
Personal wealth
Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of €2 million, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies. As the French President, one of his first actions was to give himself a pay raise: his yearly salary went from €101,000 to €240,000, matching other European officeholders. He is also entitled to a mayoral, parliamentarian and presidential pension as a former Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, member of the National Assembly and President of France.Early political career
Sarkozy is recognised by French parties on both the Right and Left as a skilled politician and striking orator. His supporters within France emphasize his charisma, political innovation and willingness to "make a dramatic break" amid mounting disaffection against "politics as usual". Overall, he is considered more pro-American and pro-Israeli than most French politicians.From 2004 to 2007, Sarkozy was president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, France's major right-wing political party, and he was Minister of the Interior in the government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, with the honorific title of Minister of State, making him effectively the number three official in the French State after President Jacques Chirac and Villepin. His ministerial responsibilities included law enforcement and working to co-ordinate relationships between the national and local governments, as well as Minister of Worship: in this role he created the French Council of the Muslim Faith. Previously, he was a député in the French National Assembly. He was forced to resign this position in order to accept his ministerial appointment. He previously also held several ministerial posts, including Finance Minister.
In Government: 1993–1995
Sarkozy's political career began when he was 23, when he became a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine. A member of the Neo-Gaullist party RPR, he went on to be elected mayor of that town, after the death of the incumbent mayor Achille Peretti. Sarkozy had been close to Peretti, as his mother was Peretti's secretary. A more senior RPR councillor, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become mayor, and asked Sarkozy to organize his campaign. Instead, Sarkozy took that opportunity to propel himself into the office of mayor. He was the youngest mayor of any town in France with a population of over 50,000. He served from 1983 to 2002. In 1988, he became a deputy in the National Assembly.In 1993, Nicolas Sarkozy was in the national news for personally negotiating with the "Human Bomb", a man who had taken small children hostages in a kindergarten in Neuilly. The "Human Bomb" was killed after two days of talks by policemen of the RAID, who entered the school stealthily while the attacker was resting.
At the same time, from 1993 to 1995, he was Minister for the Budget and spokesman for the executive in the cabinet of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. Throughout most of his early career, Sarkozy had been seen as a protégé of Jacques Chirac. During his tenure, he increased France's public debt more than any other French Budget Minister, by the equivalent of €200 billion . The first two budgets he submitted to the parliament assumed a yearly budget deficit equivalent to six percent of GDP. According to the Maastricht Treaty, the French yearly budget deficit may not exceed three percent of France's GDP.
In 1995, he spurned Chirac and backed Édouard Balladur for President of France. After Chirac won the election, Sarkozy lost his position as Minister for the Budget, and found himself outside the circles of power.
However, he returned after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary election, as the number two candidate of the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin resigned, in 1999, he took the leadership of the Neo-Gaullist party. But it obtained its worst result at the 1999 European Parliament election, winning 12.7% of the votes, less than the dissident Rally for France of Charles Pasqua. Sarkozy lost the RPR leadership.
In 2002, however, after his re-election as President of the French Republic, Chirac appointed Sarkozy as minister of the interior in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, despite Sarkozy's support of Edouard Balladur for president in 1995. Following Chirac's 14 July keynote speech on road safety, Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior pushed through new legislation leading to the mass purchase of speed cameras and a campaign to increase the awareness of dangers on the roads.
In the cabinet reshuffle of 30 April 2004, Sarkozy became finance minister. Tensions continued to build between Sarkozy and Chirac and within the UMP party, as Sarkozy's intentions of becoming head of the party after the resignation of Alain Juppé became clear.
In party elections of 10 November 2004, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned as finance minister. Sarkozy's ascent was marked by the division of UMP between sarkozystes, such as Sarkozy's "first lieutenant", Brice Hortefeux, and Chirac loyalists, such as Jean-Louis Debré.
Sarkozy was made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur by President Chirac in February 2005. He was re-elected on 13 March 2005 to the National Assembly.
On 31 May 2005, the main French news radio station France Info reported a rumour that Sarkozy was to be reappointed minister of the interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin without resigning from the UMP leadership. This was confirmed on 2 June 2005, when the members of the government were officially announced.