First term: 1995–2002 Juppé ministry outside the
Élysée Palace, 1999 During the
1995 presidential campaign, Chirac criticised the "sole thought" () of
neoliberalism represented by his challenger on the right and promised to reduce the "social fracture", placing himself more to the centre and thus forcing Balladur to
radicalise himself. Ultimately, he obtained more votes than Balladur in the first round (20.8 per cent), and then defeated the
Socialist candidate
Lionel Jospin in the second round (52.6 per cent). Chirac was elected on a platform of tax cuts and job programmes, but his policies did little to ease the labour strikes during his first months in office. On the domestic front, neo-liberal economic austerity measures introduced by Chirac and his conservative prime minister
Alain Juppé, including budgetary cutbacks, proved highly unpopular. At about the same time, it became apparent that Juppé and others had obtained preferential conditions for public housing, as well as other perks. At the year's end, Chirac faced
major workers' strikes which turned, in November–December 1995, into a
general strike, one of the largest since May 1968. The demonstrations were largely pitted against Juppé's plan for pension reform, and ultimately led to his dismissal. Shortly after taking office, Chiracundaunted by international protests by environmental groupsinsisted upon the resumption of
nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in
French Polynesia in 1995, a few months before signing the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Reacting to criticism, Chirac said, "You only have to look back at 1935...There were people then who were against France arming itself, and look what happened." On 1 February 1996, Chirac announced that France had ended "once and for all" its nuclear testing and intended to accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Elected as President of the Republic, he refused to discuss the existence of French military bases in Africa, despite requests by the
Ministry of Defence and the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chirac was the first president of France to take responsibility for the deportation of Jews during the Vichy regime. In a speech made on 16 July 1995 at the site of the
Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, where 13,000 Jews had been held for deportation to concentration camps in July 1942, Chirac said, "France, on that day, committed the irreparable". Those responsible for the roundup were "4,500 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders [who] obeyed the demands of the Nazis. ... the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French State".
"Cohabitation" with Jospin In 1997, Chirac dissolved parliament for
early legislative elections in a gamble designed to bolster support for his conservative economic program. But instead, it created an uproar, and his power was weakened by the subsequent backlash. The Socialist Party (PS),
joined by other parties on the left, soundly defeated Chirac's conservative allies, forcing Chirac into a new period of
cohabitation with Jospin as prime minister (1997–2002), which lasted five years. Cohabitation significantly weakened the power of Chirac's presidency. The French president, by a
constitutional convention, only controls foreign and military policy— and even then, allocation of funding is under the control of Parliament and under the significant influence of the prime minister. Short of dissolving parliament and calling for new elections, the president was left with little power to influence public policy regarding crime, the economy, and public services. Chirac seized the occasion to periodically criticise Jospin's government. His position was weakened by
scandals about the financing of RPR by Paris municipality. In 2001, the left, represented by
Bertrand Delanoë (PS), won a majority on the city council of the capital.
Jean Tiberi, Chirac's successor at the Paris city hall, was forced to resign after having been put under investigation in June 1999 on charges of in the
HLMs of Paris affairs (related to the illegal financing of the RPR). Tiberi was finally expelled from the
Rally for the Republic, Chirac's party, on 12 October 2000, declaring to the magazine on 18 November 2000: "Jacques Chirac is not my friend anymore". After the publication of the diaries of
Jean-Claude Méry by on 22 September 2000, in which Jean-Claude Méry, in charge of the RPR's financing, directly accused Chirac of organising the network, and of having been physically present on 5 October 1986, when Méry gave in cash 5 million
Francs, which came from companies who had benefited from state deals, to
Michel Roussin, personal secretary ( of Chirac, Chirac refused to attend court in response to his summons by judge
Eric Halphen, and the highest echelons of the French justice system declared that he could not be inculpated while in office. During his two terms, he increased the Elysee Palace's total budget by 105 per cent (to €90 million, whereas 20 years before it was the equivalent of €43.7 million). He doubled the number of presidential cars – to 61 cars and seven scooters in the Palace's garage. He hired 145 extra employees – the total number of people he employed simultaneously was 963.
Defence policy As the Supreme Commander of the French armed forces, he reduced the military budget, as did his predecessor. At the end of his first term, it accounted for three per cent of GDP. In 1997 the aircraft carrier
Clemenceau was decommissioned after 37 years of service, with her sister ship
Foch decommissioned in 2000 after 37 years of service, leaving the French Navy with no aircraft carrier until 2001, when
Charles de Gaulle was commissioned. He also reduced expenditure on nuclear weapons and the French nuclear arsenal was reduced to include 350 warheads, compared to the Russian nuclear arsenal of 16,000 warheads. He also published a plan to reduce the number of fighters the French military had by 30. After François Mitterrand left office in 1995, Chirac began a rapprochement with NATO by joining the
Military Committee and attempting to negotiate a return to the
integrated military command, which failed after the French demand for parity with the United States went unmet. The possibility of a further attempt foundered after Chirac was forced into cohabitation with a Socialist-led cabinet between 1997 and 2002, then poor Franco-American relations after the French UN veto threat over Iraq in 2003 made transatlantic negotiations impossible.
Close call On 25 July 2000, as Chirac and the first lady were returning from the
G7 Summit in Okinawa, Japan, they were placed in a dangerous situation by
Air France Flight 4590 after they landed at Charles de Gaulle International Airport. The first couple were in an Air France
Boeing 747 taxiing toward the terminal when the jet had to stop and wait for Flight 4590 to take off. The departing plane, an
Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde, ran over a strip of metal on takeoff puncturing its left fuel tank and sliced electrical wires near the left landing gear. The sequence of events ignited a large fire and caused the Concorde to veer left on its takeoff roll. As it reached takeoff speed and lifted off the ground, it came within 30 feet of hitting Chirac's 747. Photographs of Flight 4590 ablaze were taken by passenger Toshihiko Sato on Chirac's jetliner.
Second term: 2002–2007 , and his wife
Marisa Letícia during a ceremony at the
Palácio da Alvorada in
Brasília, 2006. At the age of 69, Chirac faced his fourth presidential campaign in 2002. He received 20% of the vote in the first ballot of the
presidential elections in April 2002. It had been expected that he would face incumbent prime minister
Lionel Jospin (PS) in the second round of elections; instead, Chirac faced far-right politician
Jean-Marie Le Pen of the
National Front (FN), who came in 200,000 votes ahead of Jospin. All parties other than the National Front (except for ) called for opposing Le Pen, even if it meant voting for Chirac. The 14-day period between the two rounds of voting was marked by demonstrations against Le Pen and slogans such as "Vote for the crook, not for the fascist" or "Vote with a clothespin on your nose". Chirac won re-election by a landslide, with 82 per cent of the vote on the second ballot. However, Chirac became increasingly unpopular during his second term. According to a July 2005 poll, 37 per cent judged Chirac favourably and 63 per cent unfavourably. In 2006,
The Economist wrote that Chirac "is the most unpopular occupant of the Elysée Palace in the fifth republic's history."
Early term As the left-wing Socialist Party was in thorough disarray following Jospin's defeat, Chirac reorganised politics on the
right, establishing a new party – initially called the Union of the Presidential Majority, then the
Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The RPR had broken down; a number of members had formed
Eurosceptic breakaways. While the Giscardian liberals of the
Union for French Democracy (UDF) had moved to the right, the UMP won the
parliamentary elections that followed the presidential poll with ease. During an official visit to
Madagascar on 21 July 2005, Chirac described the repression of the 1947
Malagasy uprising, which left between 80,000 and 90,000 dead, as "unacceptable". Despite past opposition to state intervention, the Chirac government approved a €2.8 billion aid package to troubled manufacturing giant
Alstom. In October 2004, Chirac signed a
trade agreement with PRC president
Hu Jintao where Alstom was given €1 billion in contracts and promises of future investment in China.
Assassination attempt On 14 July 2002, during
Bastille Day celebrations, Chirac survived an assassination attempt by a lone gunman with a rifle hidden in a guitar case. The would-be assassin fired a shot toward the presidential
motorcade, before being overpowered by bystanders. The gunman,
Maxime Brunerie, underwent psychiatric testing; the violent far-right group with which he was associated, , was thence administratively dissolved.
Foreign policy ,
Gerhard Schröder,
Vladimir Putin,
Junichiro Koizumi and other state leaders in Moscow, 2005 in Paris, 8 December 2005 Along with
Vladimir Putin (whom he called "a personal friend"),
Hu Jintao, and
Gerhard Schröder, Chirac emerged as a leading voice against
George W. Bush and
Tony Blair in 2003 during the organisation and deployment of American and British forces participating in a
military coalition to
forcibly remove the government of
Iraq controlled by the
Ba'ath Party under the leadership of
Saddam Hussein that resulted in the 2003–2011
Iraq War. Despite British and American pressure, Chirac threatened to veto, at that given point, a resolution in the
UN Security Council that would authorise the use of military force to rid
Iraq of alleged weapons of mass destruction, and rallied other governments to his position. "Iraq today does not represent an immediate threat that justifies an immediate war", Chirac said on 18 March 2003. Future prime minister
Dominique de Villepin acquired much of his popularity for his speech against the war at the United Nations (UN). After Togo's leader
Gnassingbé Eyadéma's death on 5 February 2005, Chirac gave him tribute and supported his son,
Faure Gnassingbé, who has since succeeded his father. Chirac criticised the
Israeli offensive into Lebanon on 14 July 2006. However, Israeli Army Radio later reported that Chirac had secretly told Israeli prime minister
Ehud Olmert that France would support an Israeli invasion of Syria and the overthrow of the government of President
Bashar al-Assad, promising to veto any moves against Israel in the United Nations or
European Union. Whereas the disagreement on Iraq had caused a rift between Paris and Washington, recent analysis suggests that both governments worked closely together on the Syria file to end the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and that Chirac was a driver of this diplomatic cooperation. , 2006 In July 2006, the
G8 met to discuss international energy concerns. Despite the rising awareness of
global warming issues, the G8 focused on "
energy security" issues. Chirac continued to be the voice within the G8 summit meetings to support international action to curb global warming and
climate change concerns. Chirac warned that "humanity is dancing on a
volcano" and called for serious action by the world's leading industrialised nations. After Chirac's death in 2019, the street leading to the
Louvre Abu Dhabi was named Jacques Chirac Street in November 2019 in celebration of Chirac's efforts to bolster
links between France and the United Arab Emirates during his presidency. Chirac espoused a staunchly pro-Moroccan policy, and the already established pro-Moroccan French stances vis-à-vis the
Western Sahara conflict were strengthened during his presidential tenure.
Flight tax Chirac requested the
Landau-report (published in September 2004) and combined with the
Report of the Technical Group on Innovative Financing Mechanisms formulated upon request by the Heads of State of Brazil, Chile, France and Spain (issued in December 2004), these documents present various opportunities for innovative financing mechanisms while equally stressing the advantages (stability and predictability) of tax-based models. The
UNITAID project was born. Today the organisation's executive board is chaired by
Marisol Touraine.
2005 referendum on TCE On 29 May 2005, a
referendum was held in France to decide whether the country should ratify the proposed treaty for a
Constitution of the European Union (TCE). The result was a victory for the No campaign, with 55 per cent of voters rejecting the treaty on a turnout of 69 per cent, dealing a devastating blow to Chirac and the
Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, and to part of the centre-left which had supported the TCE. Following the referendum defeat, Chirac replaced his prime minister
Jean-Pierre Raffarin with Dominique de Villepin. In an address to the nation, Chirac declared that the new cabinet's top priority was to curb unemployment, which was consistently hovering above 10 per cent, calling for a "national mobilisation" to that effect.
2005 civil unrest and CPE protests Following major
student protests in spring 2006, which followed
civil unrest in autumn 2005 after the death of two young boys in
Clichy-sous-Bois, one of the poorest communes in Paris' suburbs, Chirac retracted the proposed
First Employment Contract (CPE) by "promulgating [it] without applying it", an unheard-of – and, some claim, illegal – move intended to appease the protesters while giving the appearance of not making a regarding the contract, and therefore to continue his support for his prime minister
Dominique de Villepin.
Retirement In early September 2005, Chirac suffered an event that his doctors described as a "vascular incident". It was officially reported as a "
minor stroke" or a mild stroke (also known as a
transient ischemic attack). He recovered and returned to his duties soon afterward. In a pre-recorded television broadcast aired on 11 March 2007, he announced, in a widely predicted move, that he would not choose to seek a third term as president. (In 2000 the constitution was amended to reduce the length of the presidential term to five years, so his second term was shorter than his first.) "My whole life has been committed to serving France, and serving peace", Chirac said, adding that he would find new ways to serve France after leaving office. He did not explain the reasons for his decision. He did not, during the broadcast, endorse any of the candidates running for election, but did devote several minutes of his talk to a plea against extremist politics that was considered a thinly disguised invocation to voters not to vote for
Jean-Marie Le Pen and a recommendation to
Nicolas Sarkozy not to orient his campaign so as to include themes traditionally associated with Le Pen. , 2010 == Post-presidency and death ==