After his studies, Fabius became an auditor for the
Council of State. A member of the
Socialist Party (PS) since 1974, Fabius was first elected to the
National Assembly in 1978 for the
fourth constituency of
Seine-Maritime. Fabius quickly gained entry to the circle of
François Mitterrand, the leader of the party.
In Government: 1981–1984 When Mitterrand was elected as
President of France in
1981, Fabius was nominated as Minister of the Budget. Two years later, Fabius became Minister of Industry, and pursued the policy of "industrial restructuring". In 1984, in a government shake-up, Mitterrand chose Fabius as prime minister (choosing Fabius over
Pierre Bérégovoy and
Jacques Delors). At the age of 37 he was the youngest French prime minister since 1819.
Prime minister: 1984–1986 Fabius advocated a new kind of French
socialism, which accepted the market economy. It marked a shift away from traditional socialist concerns with state ownership and instead looked for ways to modernize industry, and increase productivity, even at the cost of some jobs. Fabius also worked to modernize the party's archaic structures. In social policy, a law of December 1984 replaced allowance for orphans with a family support allowance, and empowered family allowance funds to aid in recovery of child support when a parent fails to pay. The allowable income for recipients of the young child allowance was increased (July 1984) for families with three or more children. The Fabius Government also sought to reduce penalties on families with working mothers by substantially increasing the income ceiling for dual-income families receiving the young child allowance. A parental education fund was created (1985), which provided for payments to each person who stops work or reduces hours of work as a result of the birth of any child beyond the first two, for which the parent(s) is/are responsible. In 1985, as a means of upholding the rights of homosexuals, the penal code was amended to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of "moral habits" which included sexual orientation, which also secured the right to
same-sex relationships. A decree of 17 July 1984 set up an Immigrants' Council, which could be consulted on questions of concern to the
immigrant population regarding living conditions, housing, work, employment, education, and training, as well as social and cultural activities. In November 1984, an allowance was introduced if the parent concerned had been employed for two or more years. Known as the "allocation parentale d'education," this allowance provided 1,000 francs per month for parents who decided to take two years of parental leave after the birth of their first child. The "allocation au jeune enfant," introduced in January 1985, was paid to all families at a flat rate for each child from the third month of pregnancy for nine months, regardless of the parents' income. Payment was to continue after this period for 8 out of 10 families for a further 32 months on a means-tested basis. In effect, this created a benefit for the first child in lower income families. The government, however, reduced the daily maternity allowance from 90% to 84% of the basic wage, while the reimbursement rate of so-called "comfort" medicinal products was also lowered. In June 1985, a law was passed allowing first offenders who had committed petty crimes to serve sentences of six months or less in public-service jobs. A July 1985 law tripled the amount of aid for victims of crimes. Legislation was introduced later that year to restrict the use of preventive detention, and ensure that the rights of suspects were better protected. A decree of September 1984 reconstituted the Supreme Council for the Prevention of Occupational Risks, a consultative body representing both sides of industry, to make it function more flexibly, and was extended to include crafts. to provide training for highly skilled workers. In employment policy, the Fabius Government introduced a number of measures designed to mitigate the effects of unemployment. In 1984, three youth training programmes were set up to ease the transition from school to work. The contrat de qualification (CQ) combined work and training for young workers during a 6-month to 2-year period. The contrat d'adaptation (CA) was aimed at facilitating the hiring of young workers by adapting existing skills to the work setting. Under this scheme, individuals worked for a maximum 6-month period while receiving at least 200 hours of training. The stages d'initiation a La vie professionnelle (SIVP) provided schoolleavers with an initiation into work life to enable them to sample and then choose a career. The pre-training stages lasted for three to six months, with the worker receiving at least twenty-five hours of training a month. Participation in this scheme could lead to a CQ or CA. Under a law of August 1985 governing leave for training, retraining and reemployment, employers undertake to offer such leave to a specific number of wage-earners whose redundancy would have been authorised; during this period the workers concerned will be able to benefit from a number of activities organised to help them find new jobs. A law of January 1985 widened the scope of certain social provisions, including the encouragement of training work experience schemes for young people by setting up introductory apprenticeships and extending the fifth week of annual paid holiday to nursery school assistants. A law of July 1985, while increasing the number of cases in which a firm could use temporary workers and relaxing conditions regarding the duration of certain types of contracts, also introduced changes in the rules relating to the duration of probation periods and made it harder to re-employ temporary workers in the same job before a waiting period has expired, etc. During the early Eighties, the Socialists introduced the "congé de conversion" ("conversion leave"), which received widespread publicity in 1984 when redundancy measures were introduced for the shipbuilding and steel industries. These combined the traditional tool of early retirement for redundant workers over the age of fifty with a "conversion leave" for others. These leaves suspended (but did not break) the work contract for a period of up to two years, and during this time the individual received 70% of their previous wage together with retraining in a new occupation. After the retraining was over, workers were promised two job offers. In 1985, the Fabius Government universalised the congé. The revamped congé de conversion offered redundant workers 65% of their previous salary (in line with the benefits for early retirement and unemployment compensation) and a training period of 4–10 months. Between 1985 and 1987, however, only 15,000 workers had taken advantage of the congés, and only one-third succeeded in their "conversion." A year earlier, in 1984, the Fabius government established the travaux d'utilite collective (TUC) programme to prepare school leavers for professional life. This scheme offered unemployed youth between the ages of 16 and 21 (extended to 25 in 1985), the opportunity to work half time in a public sector job. Concern over rising inequality in France was expressed in the publication of a number of books on both "the new poverty" and "social exclusion," which had become major public preoccupations. As a result of a decline in unemployment insurance coverage, those who had no welfare assistance had to rely on local charity and local assistance. This led to cases of some supermarkets providing free food parcels for the unemployed. In 1985, the Fabius Government increased the wealth tax to provide subsidies for organisations providing basic services such as hot meals, agreed to make empty housing and surplus food stocks available, and decided to provide a basic allowance of 40 francs per day for some of the unemployed over the age of 50 who had been left out of the benefit scheme. The Fabius Government's inability to prevent both rising unemployment and inequality arguably contributed to the defeat of the French Socialists in the
1986 legislative election, which led Fabius to step down as prime minister.
Scandals as prime minister The symbol of a modern French socialism, he was weakened by the "
Infected blood scandal". His government was accused of having knowingly let doctors give
haemophiliacs transfusions of blood infected by HIV. A judicial process similar to impeachment acquitted him of all personal moral responsibility in the matter. After the
sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, a
Greenpeace ship, on 10 July 1985, Prime Minister Fabius summoned journalists to his office on 22 September 1985 to read a 200-word statement in which he said: "The truth is cruel," and acknowledged that "Agents of the
French secret service sank this boat. They were acting on orders." He had previously denied that the bombers of the Rainbow Warrior were in the employ of the French secret service.
Further political career: 1986–2002 Fabius came to be seen as
Lionel Jospin's rival to be Mitterrand's heir. He failed to win the First Secretaryship of the party in 1988 and 1990 (
Rennes Congress) in spite of Mitterrand's support. Installed as President of the National Assembly in 1988 (at 41 years of age, the equal youngest in the history of the lower house). In 1989, he was elected to the
European Parliament where he served on the Committee on Institutional Affairs, while simultaneously remaining President of the National Assembly. He used this dual role to successfully propose the establishment of The Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (
COSAC) - a conference of Members of Parliament (MPs) drawn from parliamentary committees responsible for European Union affairs in each national parliament and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). He succeeded finally in becoming First Secretary of the party in 1992, but resigned after the Socialist disaster of the
1993 legislative election. He came back as president of the National Assembly in 1997, then as
Minister of Economy and Finance in
Lionel Jospin's cabinet between 2000 and 2002. After Jospin's retirement, he hoped to return as Socialist leader but he failed. He declared that his mind was changed about a number of matters and he joined the left wing of the party.
Major figure of the Socialist Party: 2002–12 In this position he was the leader of the defeated
No camp in the vote that took place among the members of his party on 1 December 2004, to decide the stance that the party would take on the impending referendum on the
European Constitution. He went on to lead the rebel faction of the party advocating a
no vote in the 2005 Referendum, and was seen as the spearhead of the whole
no campaign in France. After the
no vote won, the party leader gave an assurance that he could remain in the party though he was dismissed from the party's National Executive Committee. Fabius was a candidate in the
Socialist Party's primary to be the party's candidate in the
2007 presidential election, but finished third, behind
Ségolène Royal, the winner, and
Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was subsequently re-elected to the National Assembly in the
June 2007 parliamentary election.
Minister for Foreign Affairs: 2012–2016 On 17 May 2012, Laurent Fabius became foreign minister in the government of
Jean-Marc Ayrault, appointed prime minister by President
François Hollande. His mandate had three milestones: • he didn't want to negotiate with
President Bashar al-Assad to defeat what became
ISIL, • he supported Syrian rebel groups, and • he reckoned that "
Al-Nosra was doing a good job". As foreign minister, Fabius was also chair of the
2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference which took place in Paris. His way of engaging with all delegates to achieve a successful agreement has been described as crucial, and something that will make him "go down in history as one of the great diplomats".
President of the Constitutional Council: 2016–present Fabius was chosen by President
François Hollande to succeed
Jean-Louis Debré as President of the
Constitutional Council. The change became effective on 8 March 2016. On 12 November 2023, he took part in the
March for the Republic and Against Antisemitism in Paris in response to the
rise in antisemitism since the start of the
Gaza war. == Political offices ==