Nicolas Sarkozy nikɔla saʁkɔzi

Nicolas Sarkozy (pronounced [nikɔla saʁkɔzi]  (help·info), born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa on 28 January 1955) is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier.

Before his presidency, he was leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). UnderJacques Chirac's presidency he served as Minister of the Interior in Jean-Pierre Raffarin's (UMP) first two governments (from May 2002 to March 2004), then was appointed Minister of Financesin Raffarin's last government (March 2004 to May 2005) and again Minister of the Interior inDominique 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. He was Minister of the Budget in the government of Édouard Balladur (RPR, predecessor of the UMP) during François Mitterrand's last term.

Sarkozy is known for wanting to revitalize the French economy.^[1][2][3] He has pledged to revive the work ethic, promote new initiatives and fight intolerance.^[1] In foreign affairs he has promised a strengthening of the entente cordiale with the United Kingdom^[4] and closer cooperation with the United States.^[5] He married Carla Bruni on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris

Family background

Sarkozy is a Frenchman of mixed national and ethnic ancestry. He is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál; some sources spell itNagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál István Ernő;  Hungarian pronunciation (help·info) [nɒɟ͡ʝboːt͡ʃɒi ʃaːrkøzi paːl])^[6] a Hungarian aristocrat,^[7] and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah (b. Paris, 12 October 1925), who is of French Catholic and Greek Jewish origin.^[8][9] They were married at Saint-François-de-Sales, Paris XVII, on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959.^[10]

Pál Sárközy was born on 5 May 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging to minor Hungarian nobility.^[11] His paternal ancestor, originally a farmer, was ennobled on 10 September 1628 for his role in fighting the armies of the Ottoman Empire, but did not actually receive a title of nobility, only the right to prefix his name and use a coat of arms. The family possessed about 705 acres (2.85 km²) of land (reduced from having an estate of 2000-3000 acres in the 18th century),^[12] and a small castle in the village of Alattyán, near Szolnok, 92 km (57 miles) east of Budapest.^[6] 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, belonged to a Catholic noble family.

As the Red Army entered Hungary in 1944, the Sárközy family fled to Germany.^[13] 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 to Paris. Pál Sárközy fled 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, 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 was also Hungarian, sympathised with him and gave him a medical discharge to save him from possible death at the hands of the Viet Minh. 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 astateless person until then), he nonetheless gallicised his Hungarian name into "Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa". He met Andrée Mallah (known as Dadu^[14]) in 1949.

Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benedict Mallah, a well-off urological surgeon with a well-established reputation in the mainly bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benedict Mallah, originally named Aaron Mallah (and nicknamed Benico), was born in 1890 in the Sephardic Jewish community of Thessaloniki (then part of the Ottoman Empire). The family had originally been from Spain, then resettled in Provence, southern France, and later moved to Thessaloniki into the Jewish community established there by other Spanish expellees victims of the Spanish Inquisition. Benico Mallah, the son of jeweller Mordechai Mallah and Reyna Magriso, left Thessaloniki 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), whom he married in 1917. Adèle Bouvier, Nicolas Sarkozy's maternal grandmother, was born to a wealthy Catholic bourgeois family from Lyon.^[15] 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 Thessaloniki or moved to France were deported to concentration and extermination camps. In total, 57 family members were murdered by the Nazis.^[16]

Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement of Paris and had three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in the textile industry and current vice president of the MEDEF (French union of employers); Nicolas, born in 1955; and François, born in 1957 (an MBA and manager of a health care consultancy company.)^[17] In 1959, Paul Sarkozy left his wife and his three children. He later remarried three times and had two more children. His third wife, Christine de Ganay, married U.S. ambassador Frank G. Wisner.

Sarkozy's half-brother, Olivier, was chosen by the Carlyle Group in March 2008 as co-head and managing director of its recently launched global financial services division.^[18]

[edit]Early life

During Sarkozy's childhood, his father refused to give his 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. Sarkozy was, accordingly, raised Catholic.^[8]

Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. He also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier classmates.^[19] "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood", he said later.^[19]

[edit]Education

Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a state-funded public middle and high school in Paris's 8th arrondissement, where he failed hissixième. His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre student,^[20] but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973. He enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated with an MA in Private law, and later with a DEA degree in Business law. Paris X Nanterre had been the starting place for the May '68 student movement and was still a stronghold of leftist students. Described as a quiet student, Sarkozy soon joined theright-wing student organization, in which he was very active. He completed his military service as a part time Air Force cleaner.^[21] After graduating, he entered the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, better known as Sciences Po, (1979–1981) but failed to graduate due to an insufficient command of the English language.^[22] After passing the bar, he became a lawyer specializing in business and family law,^[23] and was one of Silvio Berlusconi's top French advocates.^[24][25][26]

[edit]Relationships

[edit]Marie-Dominique Culioli

Sarkozy married his first wife, Marie-Dominique Culioli, on 23 September 1982; her father was a pharmacist from Vico (a village north ofAjaccio, Corsica). They had two sons, Pierre (born in 1985), now a hip-hop producer,^[27] and Jean (born in 1986) now a regional councillor in the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Sarkozy's best man was the prominent right-wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent.^[28] Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they had already been separated for several years.

[edit]Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz

As mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Sarkozy met former fashion model and public relations executive Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz (great-granddaughter of composer Isaac Albéniz and daughter of a Moldovan father), when he officiated at her wedding^[29] to television host Jacques Martin. In 1988, she left her husband for Sarkozy, and divorced Martin one year later. Sarkozy married her in October 1996, with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault ^[30] They have one son, Louis, born 23 April 1997.

Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Cécilia Sarkozy acting as the chief aide for her husband.^[31] On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that she had left Sarkozy for French-Moroccan nationalRichard Attias, head of Publicis in New York.^[32] There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin, which led to Sarkozy suing the paper.^[33] In the meantime, he was said to have had an affair with a journalist of Le Figaro, Anne Fulda.^[34]

Sarkozy and Cécilia ultimately divorced on 15 October 2007, soon after his election as President. She was his second wife.^[35]

[edit]Carla Bruni

Less than a month after separating from Cécilia, Sarkozy met Italian-born singer Carla Bruni at a dinner party, and soon entered a relationship with her.^[36] They married on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.^[37]

In 2010, there were controversial reports that the marriage was in trouble. Allegations on Twitter stated that both parties were having extramarital affairs.^[38]

[edit]Personal wealth

Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of €2 million, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies.^[39] As the French President, one of his first actions was to give himself a raise: his yearly salary went from €101,000 to €240,000 (to match his European/French peers).^[40] He is also entitled to a mayoral pension as a former mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine. He also receives a yearly council pension as a former member of the council of the Hauts-de-Seine department.

[edit]Member of National Assembly

Sarkozy is recognised by both right and left as a skilled politician and striking orator.^[41] His supporters within France emphasize hischarisma, political innovation and willingness to "make a dramatic break" amid mounting disaffection against "politics as usual". Overall, he is considered more pro-United States and pro-Israeli than most French politicians.

Since November 2004, Sarkozy has been president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France's major right-wing 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 official 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 role 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.

[edit]In government

Sarkozy's political career began when he was 23, when he became a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine. 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 at the time, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become mayor, and asked Sarkozy to organize his campaign. Instead Sarkozy profited from Pasqua's short illness to propel himself into the office of mayor.^[42] He was the youngest 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 theNational 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.^[43] 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. During his tenure, he increased France's public debt more than any other French Budget Minister except his predecessor, by the equivalent of €200 billion (USD260 billion) (FY 1994-1996). The first two budgets he submitted to the parliament (budgets for FY1994 and FY1995) assumed a yearly budget deficit equivalent to six percent of GDP.^[44] According to the Maastricht Treaty, the French yearly budget deficit may not exceed three percent of France's GDP.

In 1995, he spurned Chirac and backed Édouard 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.

However, he returned after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary election, as the number two candidate of the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin resigned, in 1999, he took the leadership 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 Sarkozy's support of Edouard Balladur for French President in 1995.^[45] Following Chirac's July 14 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.

In the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Sarkozy became 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.

In party elections of November 2004, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned as Finance 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 Légion 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,^[46] he had to resign as a deputy when he became 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.

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