Michel Poniatowski

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Michel Poniatowski (16 May 1922 in Paris, France – 16 January 2002 in Opio, France). He was a Polish Prince and French politician. He was a founder of the Independent Republicans and a part of the government of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Poniatowski served as Minister of Health from 1973 to 1974 and Minister of the Interior in the d'Estaing government from 1974 to 1977. He also was a founder and honorary president of the UDF.

Contents 1 Biography and Early Career 2 1970s 2.1 Minister of the Interior and State Minister (1974-1977) 3 1980s 4 Endnotes 5 Bibliography

[edit] Biography and Early Career

Prince Michel Poniatowski was descended from the Polish Royal Family, which included one of Napoleon's Marshalls, Joseph Poniatowski. His parents were Prince Charles-Casimir Poniatowski and Princess Anne de Caraman-Chimay.

Poniatowski attended the ENA for finance and began his career in Morocco, later becoming a finance attaché in Washington, DC in 1956. He became in 1958 the chief of staff of Pierre Pflimlin, the last president of the Council of the Fourth Republic before Charles de Gaulle.

From 1959 to 1962, he was chief of staff of prime minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, then chargé de mission (1962-65), and finally director of Insurances at the Minister of Finance from 1963 to 1967.

[edit] 1970s

Michel Poniatowski then took a founding part in the Independent Republicans (RI) party, and became a RI deputy for the Val-d'Oise in 1967, as well as the general secretary of the Confederation of the Independents (become taking the presidency of their successor, the Republican Party, in 1975). He was elected mayor of L'Isle-Adam (France) in 1971. Bernard Lehideux was his head of office in 1969.

Poniatowski was then named Minister of Public Health and Social Security from April 5, 1973 to May 27, 1974, under the government of Pierre Messmer.

[edit] Minister of the Interior and State Minister (1974-1977)

He succeeded Jacques Chirac on 24 May 1974, and served the post until 1977.

Considered as the main organisator of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's victory at the 1974 presidential election, he was named Minister of State and Minister of the Interior on 27 May, which changed the official protocol of the Republic: the most important minister was not anymore the Minister of Justice.

Although he was a strong-handed Interior Minister, he suppressed the personal registers (fiches signalétiques) which customers of a hotel were to sign (a custom in force in many countries).

In August 1975, he sent the military to repress the nationalist rebellion headed by Corsican Edmond Simeoni who had illegally occupied a wine cave in Aleria. Two "gendarmes" were killed during the assault, leading him, along with Jacques Chirac, of being accused of a large part of the responsibility in the violence which then hit Corsica.

Following the assassination of Jean de Broglie, a Giscardian deputy, L'Express (January 1977) and then Le Canard enchaîné, in 1980, published documents alleging that Poniatowski had known in advance of the death threats on de Broglie, and had not acted accordingly. The satirical newspaper recalled that de Broglie had been treasurer of the Independent Republicans, and tied to the Matesa scandal, which allegedly funded the RI.

Soon after this affair, and the failure of the right-wing at the March 1977 municipal elections, Poniatowski quit the Ministry of Interior and would not be called again as minister.

[edit] 1980s

Poniatowski was a founding member, in 1978, of the Union for a French Democracy (UDF), the liberal and Christian-Democrat party which backed Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and tried to rivalize with Jacques Chirac's neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR). Until 1981, Michel Poniatowski was ambassador and personal representant of president Giscard.

He was a MEP from 1979 to 1989, and presided in the European Parliament the Commission on Development and Cooperation (1979-1984) then the Commission on Energy, Research and Technology (1984).

Poniatowski approved in September 1983 the merger of the electoral list RPR-UDF with the far-right National Front (FN) party, headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, during the partial municipal election of Dreux:

"The fascist danger in France does not come from the right, but from the left, of which it is its spiritual vocation and method. One must therefore vote against the fascists of the left." ^[1]

Poniatowski was then senator of the Val-d'Oise from 1989 to 1995, and continued to advocate in favour of electoral agreements with the National Front, taking model on the (difficult) relationship between the Socialist Party (PS) and the Communist Party (PCF).

An atypic member of the UDF, which he had co-founded, he was first ignored by his colleagues for his support of the far-right — the National Front's ascension is usually dated from the 1983 Dreux elections. After his support for electoral agreements with the FN during the 1992 regional elections and the 1993 legislative elections, he was finally disavowed by his fellow party members end of 1991, although he was neither excluded nor deprived of his honorable presidency function.

As many members of the right-wing, he supported Edouard Balladur against Chirac during the 1995 presidential election. Three years later, he participated to the right-wing party of Charles Millon, excluded from the UDF for the same reasons as Poniatowski, and they founded the Droite libérale-chrétienne (Liberal-Christian Right) which continued to ally itself with the National Front.

Poniatowski finally retreated from political life in 1999, replaced as mayor of L'Isle-Adam by his son Axel Poniatowski. He then died three years later, on 15 January 2002.

[edit] Endnotes

[edit] Bibliography

• Michel Poniatowski, Mémoires, Plon (Paris)/Le Rocher (Monaco), 1997.