III.

First Term as President

Thereafter, Chirac bided his time, concentrating on his duties as an efficient and forceful mayor of Paris. When, in the elections of March 1993, the various Conservative forces won a huge parliamentary majority, Chirac stood aside for a fellow Gaullist, Édouard Balladur, to become Mitterrand’s last prime minister, while he himself concentrated on preparing a third bid for the presidency in the spring of 1995. The campaign was a harsh one: Chirac, after overcoming the initial popularity of his Conservative rival Édouard Balladur, finished second to the Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round of the election. However, in the second round against Jospin, Chirac won by a margin of over 4 percentage points on a platform of commitment to European unity, European monetary union, and an all-out attack on unemployment, which was now perceived as France’s most urgent political problem.

Taking office in May 1995, Chirac plunged France into international controversy in June with a series of nuclear tests in the South Pacific atoll of Muniroa, a French possession, which brought widespread condemnation, and riots in Tahiti. Chirac attempted to defuse the global response, which included boycotts of French goods, by committing France to a future nuclear test-ban treaty. He also distanced himself from domestic criticism of economic austerity measures, leaving his prime minister, Alain Juppé, a close ally of Chirac, to conduct negotiations with trade unions and other interest groups. In December 1996, with strikes and policy reversals besetting economic strategy and judicial investigations unearthing evidence of extensive corruption in the Paris city administration during his tenure as mayor, Chirac defended his government’s record during a television interview in which he made controversial remarks about the French people’s reluctance to change.

In April 1997 Chirac called an early general election despite his government’s commanding majority, ostensibly to nip the electoral challenge of the far-right National Front in the bud, to revitalize his institutional reform programme, and to give a new mandate for final negotiations on the proposed European single currency. He also reportedly hoped to take advantage of the French Left’s short-term difficulties. In the event, French voters turned against Chirac’s right-wing allies, apparently reacting to his government’s failure to reduce unemployment as promised and to the stresses of structural economic reform. His unpopular prime minister Alain Juppé resigned after the first round of voting on May 25 in an attempt to restore the governing coalition’s fortunes, but voters nonetheless elected the Socialists under Lionel Jospin in the second round on June 1, in a result seen as a condemnation of Chirac’s presidency. Chirac’s foreign policy initiatives also were embarrassingly defeated in July 1997 when French proposals to admit Slovenia and Romania to NATO were rejected, and France’s readmission to the full NATO command structure was shelved.

From March 1999 Chirac steered the French effort in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) offensive against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over Yugoslav actions in Kosovo, regaining considerable popularity in the process. However, faced with disarray in the ranks of his own party, split over European policy, he refused to countenance their calls for a more combative stance with his socialist prime minister and a presidential election, to reinforce the strength of his own position, before his seven year term was complete. In February 2000 he led the European Union opposition to the Austrian coalition government that included the far-right Freedom Party of Jörg Haider, whose views upon immigration and nationalistic attitude towards European integration were regarded as “intolerable”.

The French electorate voted to reduce the length of the presidential term of office from seven to five years in September; a move that Chirac had supported. At the Nice summit that concluded the French presidency of the EU in December, Chirac fought the German demand for more votes in the Council of Ministers. He also called for the new European Rapid Reaction Force to be able to act independently of NATO and in January 2001 he attacked the new United States administration’s plans for a missile defence system. The continued rumblings of corruption scandals finally appeared to be catching up with Chirac and his coalition when the right lost the Parisian mayoralty in March for the first time since its inception in 1977. A further scandal emerged in July, involving the use of public funds for family trips during his time as mayor of Paris, but despite this Chirac was still leading in opinion polls, with voters’ concerns over crime and the economy greater than the ongoing scandals. Chirac received a further boost following his declaration of 'solidarity' with the United States after the terrorist attack of September 11; his supportive stance was widely echoed throughout the country. In October, France's highest court ruled that Chirac would not have to answer corruption claims in court while he was president as he was protected by presidential immunity; however, he could be tried following the end of his term.