Nicolas Sarkozy (French: [ni.kɔ.la saʁ.kɔ.zi] (
listen); born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa; 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as the 23rd President of France from 16 May 2007 until 15 May 2012.
Before his presidency, he was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement(UMP). Under Jacques Chirac's presidency he served as Minister of the Interiorin Jean-Pierre Raffarin's (UMP) first two governments (from May 2002 to March 2004), then was appointed Minister of Finances in Raffarin's last government (March 2004 to May 2005) and again Minister of the Interior in Dominique de Villepin's government (2005–2007).
Sarkozy was also president of the General council of the Hauts-de-Seinedepartment 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.
In foreign affairs, he promised a strengthening of the entente cordiale with the United Kingdom[1] and closer cooperation with the United States.[2] During his term, he faced the late-2000s financial crisis (followed by the recession and thedebt crisis caused by it) and the Arab Spring (especially in Tunisia, Libya, andSyria). He married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
On 6 May 2012, Sarkozy was defeated in the 2012 election by SocialistFrançois Hollande by a margin of 3.2 percentage points, or 1,139,983 votes.[3]After leaving the office, Sarkozy retired from political life.[4] As a former president, Sarkozy is entitled to ex officio membership in the Constitutional Council.
On 2 July 2014, Sarkozy was criminally charged with corruption by French prosecutors.[5][6]
Personal life[edit]
Family background[edit]
Sarkozy is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa[7] (Hungarian:nagybócsai Sárközy Pál [nɒɟ͡ʝboːt͡ʃɒi ʃaːrkøzi paːl] (al sarkozy.ogg" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File
al_sarkozy.ogg"> listen); in some sources Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál István Ernő),[8] a Hungarian aristocrat, and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah (b. Paris, 12 October 1925), whose Greek Jewish father converted to Catholicism to marry Sarkozy's French Catholic maternal grandmother.[9][10] They were married in the Saint-François-de-Sales church, 17th arrondissement of Paris, on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959.[11]
Early life[edit]
During Sarkozy's childhood, his father founded his own advertising agency and became wealthy. The family lived in a mansion owned by Sarkozy's maternal grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris. 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.[9]
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 and taller classmates.[12] "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood", he said later.[12]
Education[edit]
Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a well regarded public middle and high school in Paris's 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième. 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,[13] but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973.
Sarkozy enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated with an M.A. in private law and, later, with a D.E.A.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 the right-wing student organization, in which he was very active.[lease clarify" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedialease_clarify">why?][citation needed] He completed his military service as a part-time Air Force cleaner.[14]
After graduating from university, Sarkozy entered the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, better known as Sciences Po and where he studied[lease clarify" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedialease_clarify">why?] between 1979 and 1981, but failed to graduate[15] due to an insufficient command of the English language.[16]
After passing the bar, Sarkozy became a lawyer specializing in business and family law[16] and was one of Silvio Berlusconi's top French lawyers.[17][18][19]
Marriages[edit]
Marie-Dominique Culioli[edit]
Sarkozy married his first wife, Marie-Dominique Culioli, on 23 September 1982; her father was a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica), her uncle was Achille Peretti, the mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine from 1947–1983 and Sarkozy's political mentor. They had two sons, Pierre (born in 1985), now a hip-hop producer,[20] and Jean (born in 1986) now a local politician in the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine where Sarkozy started his own political career. Sarkozy's best man was the prominent right-wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent.[21] Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, after they had been separated for several years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy
.jpg)
