François Mitterrand (1916 - 1996) was a French lawyer and statesman who served as President of the French Republic from 1981 to 1995. The first socialist elected under the Fifth Republic and the longest-serving president in French history, he oversaw the abolition of the death penalty, extensive decentralisation, and France's commitment to the Maastricht Treaty and European monetary union. [1]
Early life and the war
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was born on 26 October 1916 in Jarnac, in the Charente, into a Catholic provincial family. He studied law and political science in Paris, at the Paris Law Faculty and the Institut d'études politiques. [1]
Mobilised in 1939, he was wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940, escaping after several attempts. He worked initially within the Vichy administration's organisation for prisoners of war, receiving the Francisque decoration, before moving into the Resistance, where he led a network of former prisoners and escapees. His conduct in this period remained a subject of public controversy for the rest of his life. [2]
Political career under the Fourth and Fifth Republics
Elected deputy for the Nièvre in 1946, he held eleven ministerial posts under the Fourth Republic, including Minister of the Interior and Minister of Justice, the latter during the Algerian War. He opposed the constitutional settlement that brought Charles de Gaulle to power in 1958, and spent the following decade as a leading figure of the non-communist opposition. [1]
As the single candidate of the left he forced de Gaulle to a second round in the 1965 presidential election, and lost again to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1974. In 1971 he took over the Socialist Party at the Épinay congress and negotiated the Common Programme with the Communists, a strategy that rebuilt the party as the dominant force on the French left. [2]
Presidency
Elected president in May 1981, Mitterrand began with an expansive reform programme: nationalisation of major banks and industrial groups, a shorter working week, a fifth week of paid holiday, retirement at sixty, decentralisation of power to the regions, and the abolition of capital punishment, carried through by his justice minister Robert Badinter. [1]
Facing capital flight and currency pressure, his government reversed course in 1983 towards austerity and the defence of the franc within European exchange arrangements. Re-elected in 1988, he twice governed through periods of "cohabitation" with right-wing prime ministers, in 1986-88 and 1993-95, establishing the workability of divided government under the Fifth Republic. [3]
In foreign policy he worked closely with the German chancellor Helmut Kohl, supported the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty, which French voters approved narrowly in 1992, and accepted German reunification. He also launched the grands projets of public architecture in Paris, including the Louvre Pyramid, the Grande Arche and the new national library. [1]
Later life and legacy
Mitterrand had been treated for prostate cancer since early in his first term, a fact concealed from the public for many years. He left office in May 1995 and died in Paris on 8 January 1996. [2]
He is credited with consolidating the alternation of power between left and right in the Fifth Republic and with anchoring France in the European project, while his record remains contested over the Vichy years, the secrecy surrounding his health and private life, and French policy in Africa. [4]
