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Nicolas Sarkozy, born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa
on 28 January 1955 in Paris, is the current President of France, elected on 6 May
2007 after defeating Socialist Party contender Ségolène Royal during the second
round of the 2007 election. Before his presidency, he was leader of the Union for a
Popular Movement (UMP) right wing party. Under Jacques Chirac's presidency, he
served as the Minister of the Interior in Jean-Pierre Raffarin (UMP)'s first two
governments (from May 2002 to March 2004), then was appointed Minister of Finances
in Raffarin's last government (March 2004-May 2005), and again Minister of the
Interior in Dominique de Villepin's government (2005-2007). Sarkozy was also
president of the General council of the Hauts-de-Seine department from 2004 to 2007
and mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of France from 1983
to 2002. Furthermore, he was also Minister of the Budget in Edouard Balladur (RPR,
predecessor of the UMP)'s government during François Mitterrand's last term.
Sarkozy is known for his strong stance on law and order issues and his desire to
revitalise the French economy. In foreign affairs, he has promised closer
cooperation with the United States. His nickname "Sarko" is used by both supporters
and opponents.
 Personal
life
Family
background
Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a rich Hungarian immigrant father, Pál Sárközy de
Nagy-Bócsa and a mother of French and Ottoman Sephardic Jewish descent, Andrée
Mallah.
Pál Sárközy was born in 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging to the lower
nobility of Hungary. The family possessed lands and a small castle in the village
of Alattyán, near Szolnok, 92 km (57 miles) east of Budapest. Pál Sárközy's father
and grandfather held elective offices in the town of Szolnok. Although the Sárközy
de Nagy-Bócsa (nagybócsai Sárközy) family was Protestant, Pál Sárközy's mother,
Katalin Tóth de Csáford (Hungarian: csáfordi Tóth Katalin), grandmother of Nicolas
Sarkozy, was from a Catholic aristocratic family.
As the Red Army entered Hungary in 1944, the Sárközy family fled to Germany. They
returned in 1945 but all their possessions had been seized. Pál Sárközy's father
died soon afterwards and his mother, fearing that he would be drafted into the
Hungarian People's Army or sent to Siberia, urged him to leave the country and
promised she would eventually follow him and meet him in Paris. Pál Sárközy managed
to flee to Austria and then Germany while his mother reported to authorities that
he had drowned in Lake Balaton. Eventually, he arrived in Baden Baden, near the
French border, where the headquarters of the French Army in Germany were located,
and there he met a recruiter for the French Foreign Legion. He signed up for five
years, and was sent for training to Sidi Bel Abbes, in French Algeria, where the
French Foreign Legion's headquarters were located. He was due to be sent to
Indochina at the end of training, but the doctor who checked him before departure,
who happened to also be Hungarian, sympathised with him and gave him a medical
discharge to save him from possible death at the hands of the Vietminh. He returned
to civilian life in Marseille in 1948 and, although he asked for French citizenship
only in the 1970s (his legal status was that of a stateless person until then), he
nonetheless gallicised his Hungarian name into "Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa". He met
Andrée Mallah, Nicolas Sarkozy's mother, in 1949.
Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benedict Mallah, a wealthy
urologist and STD specialist with a well-established reputation in the mainly
bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benedict Mallah, originally called Aaron
Mallah and nicknamed Benico, was born in 1890 in the Sephardic Jewish community of
Salonica (Thessaloniki), Ottoman Empire, which at the time had a Jewish majority.
According to Jewish genealogical societies, the Mallah family of Salonica anciently
came from Spain which they had left in 1492 when the Catholic Monarchs had expelled
the Jews. Resettled in Provence, southern France, the family had moved to Salonica
a century later. Benico Mallah, the son of a jeweler, left Salonica, then part of
the Ottoman Empire, with his mother in 1904 at the age of 14 to attend the
prestigious Lycée Lakanal boarding school of Sceaux, in the southern suburbs of
Paris. He studied medicine after his baccalaureate and decided to stay in France
and become a French citizen. A doctor in the French Army during World War I, he met
a recent war widow, Adèle Bouvier (1891–1956), from a bourgeois family of Lyon,
whom he married in 1917. Adèle Bouvier, Nicolas Sarkozy's grandmother, was a
Catholic like the majority of French people. Mallah, for whom religion had
reportedly never been a central issue, converted to Catholicism upon marrying Adèle
Bouvier, which had been requested by Adèle's parents, and changed his name to
Benedict. Although Benedict Mallah converted to Catholicism, he and his family
nonetheless had to flee Paris and take refuge in a small farm in Corrèze during
World War II to avoid being arrested and delivered to the Germans. During the
Holocaust, many of the Mallahs who stayed in Salonica or moved to France were
deported to concentration and extermination camps. In total, 57 family members were
murdered by the Nazis.
Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement in Paris and had
three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in the textile
industry, Nicolas, born in 1955 and François, born in 1957 (an MBA and manager of a
healthcare consultancy company ). In 1959 Paul Sarkozy left his wife and his three
children. He later remarried twice and had two more children with his second
wife.
Early
life
During Sarkozy's childhood, his father refused to give his former wife's family any
financial help, even though he had founded his own advertising agency and had
become wealthy. The family lived in a small mansion owned by Sarkozy's grandfather,
Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement. The family later moved to
Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France région
immediately west of the 17th Arrondissement just outside of Paris. According to
Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than
his father, whom he rarely saw. His grandfather, a Sephardi Jew by birth, was a
convert to Catholicism, and Sarkozy was, accordingly, raised in the Catholic faith
of his household. Nicolas Sarkozy, like his brothers, is a baptised and professing
Catholic. Sarkozy also said recently that one of his role models was the late pope
John Paul II.
Sarkozy's father Paul did not teach him or his brothers Hungarian. There is no
evidence suggesting that there was an attempt to educate the Sarkozy siblings about
their paternal ethnic background.
Sarkozy has said that having been abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is
today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthy
classmates. He suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness or his family's
lack of money, at least relatively to their 17th Arrondissement or Neuilly
neighbours), and is said to have harboured a considerable amount of resentment
against his absent father. "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 state-funded (public) middle and high
school in the 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième (equivalent to sixth
grade in the US and Year 7 in England and Wales). His family then sent him to the
Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic middle and high school in the 17th
arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre pupil, but where he nonetheless
obtained his baccalauréat in 1973. He enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre,
where he read law and graduated with a master's degree in Business law. Paris X -
Nanterre had been the starting place for the May '68 student movement and was still
a strong berth for leftist student unions. Although described as a quiet student,
Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing union of the university where he was very
active. After graduating, he entered the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris
(1979-1981) but failed to graduate from it due to an insufficient command of the
English language.. After passing the bar exam, he became a lawyer specializing in
French business law and family law.
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,
he earns a yearly salary of € 81,012 and is entitled to a mayoral pension because
he was mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine until 2002. He also receives a yearly council
pension, because he has been previously a member of the council of the
Hauts-de-Seine department.
Member of
National Assembly
Sarkozy is generally recognised by the right and left as a highly skilled
politician and striking orator . His supporters within France emphasise his
charisma, political innovation and willingness to "make a dramatic break" amidst
mounting disaffection against "politics as usual"; some see him as wanting to
depart from traditional French social and economic principles in favour of
American-style economic reform. Overall, he is generally considered to be somewhat
more pro-U.S. than most French politicians.
Since November 2004, Sarkozy has been president of the Union pour un Mouvement
Populaire (UMP), France's major right political party, and he was Minister of the
Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin, with the honorific title of
Minister of State, making him effectively the number three man in the French State
after President Jacques Chirac and the prime minister. 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
guise he created the CFCM, French Council of Muslim Faith). Previously, he was a
deputy to 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
Sarkozy's political career began at the age of 22, when he became a city councillor
in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy and exclusive western suburb of Paris (in the
Hauts-de-Seine département). 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.
The senior RPR politician in the time, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become mayor, and
asked Sarkozy to organise his campaign. Instead Sarkozy profited from a short
illness of Pasqua to propel himself into the office of mayor. He was the youngest
ever 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, Sarkozy was in the national news for personally negotiating with the
“Human Bomb”, a man who had taken small children hostage 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.
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 except
his predecessor, by the equivalent of 200 bn EUR (which equals $260 bn)
(FY1994-1996). The first two budgets he submitted to the parliament (budgets for
FY1994 and FY1995) assumed a yearly budget deficit equivalent to 6% of GDP.
According to the Maastricht Treaty, the French yearly budget deficit may not be
bigger than 3% of France's GDP.
However, in 1995 he spurned Chirac and backed 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. It is widely believed that ever
since 1995 Chirac has considered Sarkozy's siding with Balladur as treason, and
that the two men now loathe one another.
However, he came back after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary
election, as number 2 of the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin resigned,
in 1999, he took the lead 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 (see
French presidential election, 2002), Chirac appointed Sarkozy as French Minister of
the Interior in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, despite the
widely acknowledged friction between the two. Following Jacques Chirac's 14th of
July keynote speech on road safety Sarkozy as interior minister pushed through new
legislation leading to the mass purchase of speed cameras and a campaign to
increase the awareness of dangers on the roads.
Following the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Sarkozy was moved to the position
of 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. It became increasingly apparent that
Sarkozy would go on to seek the presidency in 2007; in an often-repeated comment
made on television channel France 2, when asked by a journalist whether he thought
about the presidential election when he shaved in the morning, Sarkozy commented,
“not just when I shave”.
In November 2004 after party elections, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85%
of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned his position
as 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 Legion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour)
by President Chirac in February 2005. He was re-elected on 13 March 2005 to the
National Assembly (as required by the constitution, he had had to resign as a
deputy when he had become minister in 2002).
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.
First term as
Minister of the Interior
Towards the end of his first term as Minister of the Interior, in 2004, Sarkozy was
the most popular and also the most unpopular conservative politician in France,
according to polls conducted at the beginning of 2004. His “tough on crime”
policies, which included increasing the police presence on the streets and
introducing monthly crime performance ratings, were popular with many and unpopular
for many others. However, he was criticised for putting forward legislation which
can be questioned as an infringement on civil rights, and adversely affected
disadvantaged sections of the population.
Sarkozy has sought to ease the sometimes tense relationships between the general
French population and the Muslim community. Unlike the Catholic Church in France
with their official leaders or Protestants with their umbrella organisations, the
French Muslim community had a lack of structure with no group that could
legitimately deal with the French government on their behalf. Sarkozy felt that the
foundation of such an organisation was desirable. He supported the foundation in
May 2003 of the private non-profit Conseil français du culte musulman (“French
Council of the Muslim Faith”), an organisation meant to be representative of French
Muslims. In addition, Sarkozy has suggested amending the 1905 law on the separation
of Church and State, mostly in order to be able to finance mosques and other Muslim
institutions with public funds so that they are less reliant on money from outside
of France.
Minister of
Finance
During his short appointment as Minister of Finance, Sarkozy was responsible for
introducing a number of policies. The degree to which this reflected libéralisme (a
hands-off approach to running the economy) or more traditional French state
dirigisme (intervention) is controversial. He resigned the day following his
election as president of the UMP.
In September 2004, Sarkozy oversaw the reduction of the government ownership stake
in France Télécom from 50.4% to 41%.
Sarkozy backed a partial nationalisation of the engineering company Alstom decided
by his predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003.
Sarkozy reached in June an agreement with the major retail chains in France to
concertedly lower prices on household goods by an average of 2%; the success of
this measure is disputed, with studies suggesting that the decrease was close to 1%
in September.
Taxes: Sarkozy avoided taking a position on the ISF (solidarity tax on wealth).
This is considered an ideological symbol by many on the Left and Right. Some in the
business world and on the Liberal Right, such as Alain Madelin, wanted it
abolished. For Sarkozy, that would have risked being categorised by the Left as a
gift to the richest classes of society at a time of economic difficulties. So
Sarkozy preferred reducing the ISF with the bouclier fiscal.
During his second term at the Ministry of the Interior, Sarkozy was
initially more discreet about his ministerial activities: instead of focusing on
his own topic of law and order, many of his declarations addressed wider issues,
since he was expressing his opinions as head of the UMP party.
However, the civil unrest in autumn 2005 put law enforcement in the spotlight
again. Sarkozy was accused of having provoked the unrest by calling young
delinquents from housing projects "rabble" ("racaille") in Argenteuil near Paris.
After the accidental death of two youths, which sparked the riots, Sarkozy first
blamed it on "hoodlums" and gangsters. These remarks were sharply criticised by
many on the left wing and by a member of his own government, Delegate Minister for
Equal Opportunities Azouz Begag.
After the rioting, he made a number of announcements on future policy: selection of
immigrants, greater tracking of immigrants, and a reform on the 1945 ordinance
government justice measures for young delinquents.
Before he was elected French President, Sarkozy was president of UMP, the French
conservative party, elected with 85% of the vote. During his presidency, the number
of members has significantly increased. In 2005, he supported a "yes" vote in the
French referendum on the European Constitution but the "No" vote won.
Throughout 2005, Sarkozy became increasingly vocal in calling for radical changes
in France's economic and social policies. These calls culminated in an interview
with Le Monde on 8 September 2005, during which he claimed that the French had been
misled for 30 years by false promises, and denounced what he considers to be
unrealistic policies. Among other issues:
he called for a simplified and “fairer” taxation system, with fewer loopholes and a
maximum taxation rate (all direct taxes combined) at 50% of revenue;
he approved measures reducing or denying social support to unemployed workers who
refuse work offered to them;
he pressed for a reduction in the budget deficit, claiming that the French state
has been living off credit for some time.
Such policies are what are called in France libéral (that is, in favour of
laissez-faire economic policies, although this judgment is made by French
standards) or, with a pejorative undertone, ultra-libéral. Sarkozy rejects this
label of libéral and prefers to call himself a pragmatist instead. Besides his
dirigisme on economical subjects is far from laissez-faire politics.
Sarkozy opened another avenue of controversy by declaring that he wanted a reform
of the immigration system, with quotas designed to admit the skilled workers needed
by the French economy. He also wants to reform the current French system for
foreign students, saying that it enables foreign students to take open-ended
curricula in order to obtain residency in France; instead, he wants to select the
best students to the best curricula in France.
In early 2006, the French parliament adopted a controversial bill known as DADVSI,
which reforms French copyright law. Since his party was divided on the issue,
Sarkozy stepped in and organised meetings between various parties involved. Later,
groups such as the Odebi League and EUCD.info alleged that Sarkozy personally and
unofficially supported certain amendments to the law, which enacted strong
penalties against designers of peer-to-peer systems.
On 14 January 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was chosen by the UMP to be its candidate in
the 2007 presidential election. Sarkozy, who was running unopposed, won 98% of the
votes. Of the 327,000 UMP members who could vote, 69% participated in the online
ballot.
In February 2007 Sarkozy appeared on a televised debate on TF1 where he expressed
his support for affirmative action for minorities and the freedom to work overtime.
Despite his opposition to same-sex marriage, he advocated civil unions and the
possibility for same-sex partners to inherit under the same regime as married
couples. The law has been voted in July 2007.
On 7 February, Nicolas Sarkozy finally decided in favour of a projected second,
non-nuclear, aircraft carrier for the national Navy (adding to the nuclear Charles
de Gaulle), during an official visit in Toulon with Defence Minister Michèle
Alliot-Marie. "This would allow permanently having an operational ship, taking into
account the constraints of maintenance", he explained.
On 21 March, President Jacques Chirac announced his support for Sarkozy, adding
that he had his vote. Chirac pointed out that Sarkozy had been chosen as
presidential candidate for the ruling UMP party, and said: "So it is totally
natural that I give him my vote and my support." To focus on his campaign, Sarkozy
stepped down as interior minister on 26 March.
During the campaign, rival candidates had accused Sarkozy of being a "candidate for
brutality" and of presenting overly hardline views about France's future. He was
also criticised by opponents for allegedly courting conservative voters in
policy-making in a bid to capitalise on right-wing sentiments among some
communities. However, his popularity was sufficient to see him polling as the
frontrunner throughout the later campaign period, consistently ahead of rival
Socialist candidate, the tuttler, Ségolène Royal.
The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April 2007. Nicolas
Sarkozy came in first with 31.18% of the votes, ahead of Ségolène Royal of the
Socialists with 25.87%. In the second round, Sarkozy came out on top to win the
election with 53.06% of the votes ahead of Ségolène Royal with 46.94%. In his
speech immediately following the announcement of the election results, Sarkozy
stressed the need for France's modernisation, but also called for national unity,
mentioning that Royal was in his thoughts. In that speech, he claimed “The French
have chosen to break with the ideas, habits and behaviour of the past. I will
restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.”
Presidency
(2007—)
On May 16, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy became the sixth President of the French Fifth
Republic. (He is also the 23rd President in the history of the French Republic, but
Presidents of France prior to the Fifth Republic with the notable exception of
Napoléon the Third had no significant political power.)
The official transfer of power from Jacques Chirac took place on 16 May at 11:00 am
(9:00 UTC) at the Élysée Palace, where he was given the authorization codes of the
French nuclear arsenal and presented with the Grand Master's Collar, symbol of his
new function of Grand Master of the Legion of Honour. At that point, he formally
became president. Leyenda, by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz was played in honour
of the president's wife, who is Albeniz's great-granddaughter. Both Sarkozy's
mother Andrée, who sat on a regal chair, and his formerly estranged father Pal—with
whom Sarkozy had reached a reconciliation--attended the ceremony, as did Sarkozy's
children. The presidential motorcade, with the President on board the presidential
Peugeot 607 Paladine, then travelled from the Élysée to the Champs-Élysées for a
public ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. Then the new president went to the Cascade
du Bois de Boulogne of Paris for a homage to the French Resistance and to the
Communist resistant Guy Môquet — he proposed that all high-school students read Guy
Moquet's last letter to his parents, which was criticised by a number of leftists
as a cynical form of reappropriation of French history by the right.
In the afternoon, the new President flew to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was replaced by François Fillon. Sarkozy
appointed Bernard Kouchner, the left-wing founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, as
his foreign minister, leading to Kouchner's expulsion from the Socialist Party. In
addition to Kouchner, three more Sarkozy ministers are from the left, including
Eric Besson, who served as Ségolène Royal's economic adviser at the beginning of
her campaign. Sarkozy also appointed seven women to form a total cabinet of 15;
one, Justice Minister Rachida Dati, is the first woman of Northern African origin
to serve in a French cabinet. Of the 15, two attended the elite Ecole Nationale
d'Administration (ENA). The ministers were reorganised, with the controversed
creation of a Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and
Co-Development — given to his right-hand man Brice Hortefeux — and of a Ministry of
Budget, Public Accounts and Civil Administration — handed out to Éric Wœrth,
supposed to prepare the replacement of only a third of all civil servants who
retire. However, after the 17 June parliamentary elections, the Cabinet has been
adjusted to 15 ministers and 16 deputy ministers, totalling 31 officials.
Shortly after taking office, President Sarkozy began negotiations with Colombian
president Álvaro Uribe and the left-wing guerrilla FARC, regarding the release of
hostages held by the rebel group, especially Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid
Betancourt. According to some sources, Sarkozy himself asked for Uribe to release
FARC's "chancellor" Rodrigo Granda. . Furthermore, he announced on 24 July, 2007,
that French and European representatives had obtained the extradition of the
Bulgarian nurses detained in Lybia to their country. In exchange, he signed with
Gaddafi security, health care and immigration pacts — and a $230 million (168
million euros) MILAN antitank missile sale . The contract was the first made by
Lybia since 2004, and was negotiated with MBDA, a subsidiary of EADS. Another 128
millions euros contract would have been signed, according to Tripoli, with EADS for
a TETRA radio system. The Socialist Party (PS) and the Communist Party (PCF)
criticised a "state affair" and a "barter" with a "Rogue state" . The leader of the
PS, François Hollande, requested the opening of a parliamentary investigation .
On June 8, 2007, during the 33rd G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Sarkozy set a goal of
reducing French CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050 in order to prevent global warming. He
then pushed forward the important Socialist figure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as
European nominee to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) . Critics alleged that
Sarkozy proposed to nominate Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the IMF to
deprive the Socialist Party of one of its more popular figures.
The UMP, Sarkozy's party, won a majority at the June 2007 legislative election,
although by less than expected. In July, the UMP majority, seconded by the Nouveau
Centre, ratified one of Sarkozy's electoral promises, which was to partially revoke
the inheritance tax. The inheritance tax formerly brought eight billion euros into
state coffers.
After winning the election, Sarkozy's UMP majority has reduced taxes, in particular
for upper middle-class people, allegedly in a effort to boost GDP growth, but did
not reduce state expenditures. He was criticised by the European Commission for
doing so. Furthermore, Sarkozy broke with the custom of amnestying traffic tickets
and of releasing thousands of prisoners from overcrowded jails on Bastille Day, a
tradition that Napoleon had started in 1802 to commemorate the storming of the
Bastille during the French Revolution
Sarkozy then went on vacation to the United States, taking his family to Lake
Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. He stayed in the 11-bathroom shorefront mansion of
former Microsoft executive Michael Appe . He was brought there by a commercial jet,
however, after the death of Cardinal Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, whose funeral
he was to attend, one of his presidential planes flew him on 10 August to Paris and
then back to America. On 21 August he returned to France by a commercial jet.
Sarkozy's government issued a decree on 7 August, 2007 to generalise a voluntary
biometric profiling program of travellers in airports. The program, called Parafes,
was to use fingerprints. The new database would be interconnected with the Schengen
Information System (SIS) as well as with a national database of wanted persons
(FPR). The CNIL protested against this new decree, opposing itself to the recording
of fingerprints and to the interconnection between the SIS and the FPR .
It has been asserted that Sarkozy carefully controls his public
image. He was named the 68th best dressed person by the US magazine Vanity Fair,
alongside David Beckham and Brad Pitt. Beside publicizing, at times, and at others,
refusing to publicise his wife's image, Sarkozy takes care of his own personal
image, sometimes to the point of censoring (such as in the Paris Match affair, when
he allegedly forced its director to resign following an article on Cécilia and her
affair with Publicis executive Richard Attias, or pressures exercised on the
Journal du dimanche, which was preparing to publish an article concerning Cécilia's
decision not to vote in the second round of the 2007 presidential election. In its
August 9, 2007 edition, Paris Match retouched a photo of Sarkozy in order to erase
a love handle. His official portrait destined for all French townhalls was done by
SIPA photographer Philippe Warrin, better known for his paparazzi work.
Former Daily Telegraph journalist Colin Randall has however highlighted Sarkozy's
tighter control of his image and frequents interventions in the media: "he censors
a book, or fires the chief editor of an hebdomary."
Religion and
state
In 2004, he published a book called La République, les religions, l'espérance (“The
Republic, Religions, and Hope”), in which he argued that the young should not be
brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also advocated reducing the
separation of church and state, arguing for the government subsidy of mosques in
order to encourage Islamic integration into French society. He flatly opposes
financing of religious institutions with funds from outside France. After meeting
with Tom Cruise, Sarkozy was criticised by some for meeting with a member of the
Church of Scientology, which is classified as a cult (secte translates "cult") in
France (see Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France).
War in
Iraq
Nicolas Sarkozy, like almost all French politicians,
disapproved of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but was nonetheless critical of
the way Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin
expressed France's opposition to the war. Talking at the French-American
Foundation in Washington, D.C. on 12 September 2006, he denounced what he
called the "French arrogance" and said: "It is bad manners to embarrass one's
allies or sound like one is taking delight in their troubles." He also added:
"We must never again turn our disagreements into a crisis." This speech, given
without the assent of the French president by a member of the French
government traveling abroad (Sarkozy was still Minister of the Interior), was
criticised by many in France. Jacques Chirac reportedly said in private that
Sarkozy's speech was "appalling" and "a shameful act".
Even though his current foreign minister Bernard Kouchner (excluded from the
Socialist party after his inclusion in François Fillon's government) had been one
of the few supporters in France of removal of Saddam Hussein from power, Sarkozy's
stance on the war has not changed.
Awards and
honours
Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur (2007 - Automatic when taking office)
Was previously Knight of the Légion d'honneur (since 2004)
Grand Cross of the Ordre national du Mérite (2007 - Automatic when taking
office)
Commander of the Ordre de Léopold (Belgium)
Stara Planina (Bulgaria)
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Nicolas
Sarkozy - Projector - Biography
