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Nicolas Sarkozy (IPA: [nikɔˈla
saʁkɔˈzi] — 
pronunciation?), 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[1] and his desire to revitalise the French economy.[2] In
foreign affairs, he has promised closer cooperation with the
United States.[3]
His nickname "Sarko" is used by both supporters and opponents.
Personal life
Family background
Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a wealthy Hungarian immigrant father, Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa[4] (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál;
some sources spell it Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál; Hungarian pronunciation?), and a mother of French and Ottoman Sephardic Jewish descent, Andrée Mallah[5][6].
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. [4] 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[7]. 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.[5]
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 [5]). In 1959 Paul
Sarkozy left his wife and his three children. He later remarried twice and had two more children with his second wife.
Nicolas Sarkozy at Paris, May
2005.
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.[8] 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.[9]
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[10], 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.[11]. After passing the bar exam, he became a lawyer specializing
in French business law and family law.[12]
Marriages, divorces and separations
On 23 September 1982, he married Marie-Dominique Culioli,
daughter of a pharmacist from Vico (a village
north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They have two sons, Pierre (born in
1985) and Jean (born in 1987). Sarkozy's marriage witness was the
prominent right wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent.
Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they had already been separated for several years.
As mayor of Neuilly, Sarkozy met Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (great-granddaughter of
composer Isaac Albéniz and of a Russian father), when he officiated at her wedding[13][14] to TV host Jacques Martin. She is a former
fashion model and public relations executive. In 1988, Ciganer-Albeniz left her husband for
Sarkozy, and divorced Martin one year later. Sarkozy married her in October 1996 (with witnesses
Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault). They have one
son, Louis, born April 23 1997.
Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Ciganer-Albeniz acting as the chief aide
for her husband.[15] On 25
May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper
Le Matin revealed that Ciganer-Albeniz had left Sarkozy for
French-Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New York.[16] There were
other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin. This led Sarkozy to
sue the paper.[6] In the meantime, he is said to have had an affair
with a journalist of Le Figaro, Anne Fulda.[17]
In January 2006, a reconciliation with Ciganer-Albeniz took place.[18] In early 2006, Sarkozy suggested to the press that he had welcomed Ciganer-Albeniz back from the
USA, although the exact circumstances of the reconciliation are not known.[19]
On October 18 2007, the presidential office announced that
Nicolas Sarkozy and Cécillia had divorced by means of a mutual consent divorce (divorce par consentement mutuel) on
October 15. It is of interest to note that she could not have filed a divorce case
against him, due to his presidential immunity.
Personal wealth
Nicolas Sarkozy in Argentina, 9 February 2007
Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of €2
million, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies. [20] 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 [21]. 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
Nicolas Sarkozy with George W. Bush
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.[22] 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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.[23] 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.[citation needed] 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”.[24]
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,[25] 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. [citation needed]
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.[26] 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[27] 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%.[28]
- Sarkozy backed a partial nationalisation of the engineering company Alstom decided by his
predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003.[29]
- 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.[30]
- 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.[31] So Sarkozy preferred reducing the ISF with the bouclier fiscal.
Villepin government
Second term as Minister of the Interior
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.[32]
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.
Action as UMP's leader
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.[33] 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.
Candidacy for President
-
Nicolas Sarkozy meeting his supporters in Toulouse for the 2007 French presidential election.
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.[34]
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[35].
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.[36]
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.[37]
During the campaign, rival candidates had accused Sarkozy of being a "candidate for brutality" and of presenting overly
hardline views about France's future.[38] 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 tuttleer, 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.[39] The presidential motorcade, with the President on board the presidential Peugeot 607
Paladine[40], 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[41][42][43][44].
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.[45] 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).[46] 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. [47]. 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
[48]. The contract was the first made by
Libya 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" [49]. The leader of the PS, François Hollande, requested the
opening of a parliamentary investigation [48].
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) [50]. 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[51].
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.[52][53] The
inheritance tax formerly brought eight billion euros into state coffers.[54]
After winning the election, Sarkozy's UMP majority has reduced taxes, in particular for upper middle-class people, allegedly
in an 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 [48]
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 [48]. He was brought there by a commercial jet,
however, after the death of Cardinal Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, whose funeral he was to attend[55], 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 [56].
Main members of Sarkozy's staff
- General secretary - Claude Guéant [57]
- Chief of the private military staff - Vice-amiral d'escadre Édouard Guillaud
- Special advisor to the President - Henri Guaino
- Advisors to the President - Raymond Soubie and Catherine Pégard
- Diplomatic advisor and
