Lionel Jospin

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Lionel Jospin

Prime Minister of France
In office 3 June 1997 – 6 May 2002
Preceded by	Alain Juppé
Succeeded by	Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Born	12 July 1937 Meudon, France
Political party	Socialist

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.

1 Studies and early political career
2 Prime Minister
3 Trotskyist past
4 Jospin's Ministry, 4 June 1997 - 7 May 2002
5 External links

[edit] Studies and early political career

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.

Representative of a generation of left-wingers who criticized the old Socialist party SFIO, he joined 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 Laurent Fabius was chosen as Prime minister, a rivalry appeared between these two political heirs of Mitterrand. It broke out when they completed for the leadership of the 1986 legislative campaign.

In 1988, after Mitterrand's re-election, he left the PS leadership, and 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. In 1992, he was ejected from the government.

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 became-back the leader 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.

[edit] 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 week, provided additional health insurance for the poorest, 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 Hezbullah'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. [1]

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 had not 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 did not 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 to "not divide the party".

[edit] Trotskyist past

During his school years in the 1960s, Jospin joined the Internationalist Communist Organization, a secretive group dedicated to an unreconstructed Trotskyist program of overthrowing France's semi-presidential democracy for the dictatorship of the proletariat. He remained active in it during the 1970s while also serving as a trusted member of the Socialist Party.

Jospin concealed this relationship, and specifically denied it when asked about it later. 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, but the political damage was not 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).

[edit] Jospin's Ministry, 4 June 1997 - 7 May 2002

Lionel Jospin - Prime Minister
Hubert Védrine - Minister of Foreign Affairs
Alain Richard - Minister of Defense
Jean-Pierre Chevènement - Minister of the Interior
Dominique Strauss-Kahn - Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry
Martine Aubry - Minister of Employment and Solidarity
Elisabeth Guigou - Minister of Justice
Claude Allègre - Minister of National Education, Research, and Technology.
Catherine Trautmann - Minister of Culture and Communication
Louis Le Pensec - Minister of Agriculture and Forests
Dominique Voynet - Minister of Environment and Regional Planning
Marie-George Buffet - Minister of Youth and Sport
Jean-Claude Gayssot - Minister of Transport, Housing, and Equipment
Daniel Vaillant - Minister of Relations with Parliament
Émile Zuccarelli - Minister of Civil Service, Reform of the State, and Decentralization

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.

Preceded by François Mitterrand	First Secretary of the Socialist Party 1981–1988	Succeeded by Pierre Mauroy
Preceded by —	Minister of Research and Technology 1988	Succeeded by Hubert Curien
Preceded by René Monory	Minister of National Education 1988–1992	Succeeded by Jack Lang
Preceded by —	Minister of Sport 1988–1991	Succeeded by Frédérique Bredin
Preceded by Henri Emmanuelli	First Secretary of the Socialist Party 1995–1997	Succeeded by François Hollande
Preceded by Alain Juppé	Prime Minister of France 1997–2002	Succeeded by Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Preceded by Francois Mitterrand	Socialist Party Presidential candidate 1995 (lost), 2002 (lost)	Succeeded by Segolene Royal