François Mitterrand

François Mitterrand (1916-1996), French politician, President of France (1981-1995), the longest-serving French presidential incumbent.

Born at Jarnac in the Charente region, into a strongly conservative Roman Catholic middle-class family, Mitterrand studied law, literature, and political science at the University of Paris, also becoming involved in right-wing political organizations such as the militant Action Française. He served in the French Army during World War II, and was taken prisoner on the fall of France in 1940, but escaped into Vichy France. Although employed and decorated by the Vichy government, he was active in the Resistance during the German occupation of France.

Mitterrand was elected to the National Assembly in 1946 from the rural Nièvre region, and later served as Minister for Former Combatants (1947-1948), Minister for Overseas Territories (1950-1951), Minister of the Interior (1954-1955), and Minister of State for Justice (1956-1957). Controversially, he backed the use of force to maintain the French presence in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence. After losing his National Assembly seat in 1958, he was re-elected in 1962.

In 1965 Mitterrand ran unsuccessfully for the presidency against Charles de Gaulle as the candidate of the non-Communist left, and in 1971 he emerged as the leader of a new Socialist party, which he moulded as his personal political platform. With Communist support, he ran against President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1974, losing by a narrow margin. In 1981 Mitterrand again challenged Giscard, winning a decisive victory and becoming the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic. Although he gave some Communists minor posts in his government, his foreign policy was firmly anti-Soviet; at home he began by nationalizing banks and some major industries, lowering the official retirement age, and increasing state welfare support. He also initiated large-scale construction projects in Paris, such as the addition of a glass pyramid entrance designed by I. M. Pei to the Louvre, apparently intended as a personal monument. His early policies produced heavy inflation, rising unemployment, and three devaluations of the franc. With his programme clearly failing, Mitterrand cut public spending, shed the Communists from his Cabinet, and imposed a policy of free competition with other European Union countries on the French economy, initiating the 1985-1986 Single European Act with Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany. His enigmatic character, coupled with his political adaptability and apparent skill at intrigue, earned him the nickname “the Florentine”.

After right-wing parties won the National Assembly elections in 1986, Mitterrand entered into a power-sharing arrangement with the new Conservative prime minister, Jacques Chirac. Mitterrand defeated Chirac and several other challengers in the 1988 presidential election, a sign of revived public trust in him, and appointed the Socialist Michel Rocard as prime minister. His continuing love of display was shown by the completion of the Grande Arche at La Défense in 1989. Despite an apparent abortive attempt to slow the pace of German reunification in 1989, he was able to maintain good relations with the newly reunited Germany, and with Chancellor Kohl he forged the Treaty of Maastricht on European union in 1991. He also contributed sizeable French forces to the Gulf War in 1991.

Rocard's resignation in May 1991 was followed by a first indication of weakening political judgement, when Mitterrand appointed the abrasive and diplomatically clumsy Edith Cresson as his new prime minister. She was supplanted by Pierre Bérégovoy in April 1992. Mitterrand was operated on for prostate cancer in September 1992. Bérégovoy left office after the Socialists' electoral defeat by Conservative forces in March 1993, and soon afterwards committed suicide, following allegations of deliberately misleading the public over the French economic situation which implicated Mitterrand.

Amid growing rumours of Socialist government corruption centring round the presidency, Mitterrand drew aloof from his old party base, while a new period of left-right cohabitation ensued under the Conservative prime minister Édouard Balladur. In July 1994 he was operated on again for cancer. After the narrow victory of Jacques Chirac in the 1995 presidential election, Mitterrand left office in May 1995. His last months in retirement were attended by revelations of his friendship with wartime collaborators from the Vichy government and his marital infidelities. He died in Paris on January 8, 1996.