* Hollande *

اولاند

François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (French pronunciation: ​; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician. A longtime leader of the Socialist Party, he became President of France with the election of May 2012. In accordance with established law, the assumption of the French Presidency also made Hollande the ex-officio Co-Prince of Andorra.

Hollande was the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008. He also served in the National Assembly twice, as a representative of Corrèze (1988–1993 and 1997–2012). His past offices included mayor of Tulle (2001–08) and president of Corrèze''s General Council (2008–12).

• 1 Early life and education
• 2 Early political career
• 3 First Secretary of the Socialist Party
• 4 2012 presidential campaign
• 5 President of France, 2012–present
  • 5.1 Budget
  • 5.2 LGBT rights
  • 5.3 Labor reform
  • 5.4 Pension reform
  • 5.5 Foreign affairs
    • 5.5.1 Sahel religionist militants
  • 5.6 Co-Prince of Andorra
  • 5.7 Approval ratings
• 6 Personal life
• 7 Honours and decorations
  • 7.1 National honours
  • 7.2 Foreign honours
• 8 Works
• 9 References
• 10 Further reading
• 11 External links

Hollande was born in Rouen to a middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert (1927–2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who "had once run for the far right in local politics." Hollande was raised Catholic but is now an atheist. (In December 2011, Hollande told the French Christian magazine La Vie that he respects all religious practices but has none of his own.) The family moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a highly exclusive suburb of Paris, when Hollande was 13.

He attended Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle boarding school, a private Catholic school in Rouen, then HEC Paris, the Institut d''études politiques de Paris (Paris Institute of Political Studies), and the École nationale d''administration. He graduated from ENA in 1980 and chose to enter the prestigious Cour des comptes. He lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 while he was a university student. Immediately after graduating, he was employed as a councillor in the Court of Audit.

After volunteering as a student to work for François Mitterrand''s ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election, Hollande joined the Socialist Party five years later. He was quickly spotted by Jacques Attali, a senior adviser to Mitterrand, who arranged for Hollande to stand for election to the French National Assembly in 1981 in Corrèze against future President Jacques Chirac, who was then the Leader of the Rally for the Republic, a Neo-Gaullist party. Hollande lost to Chirac in the first round.

He went on to become a special advisor to newly elected President Mitterrand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government''s spokesman. After becoming a municipal councillor for Ussel in 1983, he contested Corrèze for a second time in 1988, this time being elected to the National Assembly. Hollande lost his bid for re-election to the National Assembly in the so-called "blue wave" of the 1993 election, described as such due to the number of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.

As the end of Mitterrand''s term in office approached, the Socialist Party was torn by a struggle of internal factions, each seeking to influence the direction of the party. Hollande pleaded for reconciliation and for the party to unite behind Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission, but Delors renounced his ambitions to run for the French presidency in 1995, leading to Lionel Jospin''s resuming his earlier position as the leader of the party. Jospin selected Hollande to become the official party spokesman, and Hollande went on to contest Corrèze once again in 1997, successfully returning to the National Assembly.

That same year, Jospin became the prime minister of France, and Hollande won the election for his successor as first secretary of the French Socialist Party, a position he would hold for eleven years. Because of the very strong position of the Socialist Party within the French government during this period, Hollande''s position led some to refer to him the "vice prime minister". Hollande would go on to be elected mayor of Tulle in 2001, an office he would hold for the next seven years.

The immediate resignation of Jospin from politics following his shock defeat by far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election forced Hollande to become the public face of the party for the 2002 legislative election but, although he managed to limit defeats and was re-elected in his own constituency, the Socialists lost nationally. In order to prepare for the 2003 party congress in Dijon, he obtained the support of many notable personalities of the party and was re-elected first secretary against opposition from left-wing factions.

After the triumph of the Left in the 2004 regional elections, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but the Socialists were divided on the European Constitution, and Hollande''s support for the ill-fated "Yes" position in the French referendum on the European constitution caused friction within the party. Although Hollande was re-elected as first secretary at the Le Mans Congress in 2005, his authority over the party began to decline from this point onwards. Eventually his domestic partner, Ségolène Royal, was chosen to represent the Socialist Party in the 2007 presidential election, where she would lose to Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hollande was widely blamed for the poor performances of the Socialist Party in the 2007 elections, and he announced that he would not seek another term as first secretary. Hollande publicly declared his support for Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, although it was Martine Aubry who would go on to win the race to succeed him in 2008.

Following his resignation as first secretary, Hollande was immediately elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as the president of the General Council of Corrèze in April 2008, a position he holds to this day. In 2008 he supported the creation of the first European Prize for Local History (Étienne Baluze Prize), founded by the "Société des amis du musée du cloître" of Tulle, on the suggestion of the French historian Jean Boutier. François Hollande awarded the first prize on 29 February 2008 to the Italian historian Beatrice Palmero in the General Council of Corrèze.

Tags:1927, Audit, Chirac, Christian, Congress, Constitution, Facebook, France, François Hollande, French, Holland, Hollande, Italian, LGBT, Paris, President, Prime Minister, Thomas, United States, Website, Wikipedia

See Also:François Hollande