Nicolas Sarkozy | president of France | Britannica.com president of France Nicolas Sarkozy, (born January 28, 1955, Paris, France), French politician who served as president of France (2007–12). Nicolas Sarkozy, 2006. AP Sarkozy was born to immigrant Greek and Hungarian parents. He qualified as a lawyer (1981) and pursued advanced studies in political science at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris (1979–81). An ambitious and highly skilled politician, Sarkozy in 1983 was elected mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine , where he served until 2002. He first made his mark on the national scene in 1993 when he became budget minister and official spokesman in the government of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur . Balladur had been put forward by rightist politicians, including Jacques Chirac , to serve as prime minister under Socialist Pres. François Mitterrand , with the idea that someone—such as Chirac—would contest the 1995 presidential election.

Sarkozy, however, encouraged Balladur to run for president himself and thereby earned the lasting enmity of Chirac, to whom he had once been very close. Balladur lost to Chirac, and Sarkozy was shut out of the subsequent centre-right government of 1995–97. In 2002, after Chirac’s reelection as president was quickly followed by the election of another centre-right administration, Sarkozy returned to office as interior minister, a post he held for nearly two years until he became finance minister in March 2004. Soon after, however, Chirac asked him to choose between his government post and becoming president of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, the neo-Gaullist successor party to the Rally for the Republic that Chirac had founded. Sarkozy chose the UMP job and quit the government in November 2004. In the wake of the May 2005 referendum in which French voters rejected the proposed European Union (EU) constitution, Chirac invited Sarkozy to return as interior minister in a new government to be headed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin .

In late 2005 Sarkozy had to contend with three weeks of rioting in the less-affluent suburbs of Paris and other cities. Although critics blamed him for inciting the car-burning protesters by calling them “scum,” his supporters approved of his hard-line stance on law and order as well as his call for tougher immigration laws. In 2007 Sarkozy ran for president of France. He finished first in the initial round of voting on April 22, winning 31 percent of the vote. In the runoff election on May 6, Sarkozy defeated Ségolène Royal of the Socialist Party , capturing 53 percent of the vote. Sarkozy was sworn in as president on May 16, 2007. He promised a “rupture” with France’s past, including radical economic reforms that would reduce taxes and liberalize the country’s labour market, and closer relations with the United States . Nicolas Sarkozy delivering a speech, May 2007. Thomas Coex—AFP/Getty Images Ringling Bros.

Folds Its Tent In the parliamentary elections of June 2007 Sarkozy’s UMP did less well than expected but still well enough to provide a comfortable majority for the new government of François Fillon, whom Sarkozy had appointed as prime minister just after assuming the presidency. In the subsequent cabinet reshuffle, Sarkozy made several surprising appointments, including the country’s first woman finance minister ( Christine Lagarde ), the first full cabinet member of North African origin (Rachida Dati), and a maverick Socialist (Bernard Kouchner) as foreign minister. Sarkozy also chose Socialists for several other key appointments. In the first few months of his presidency Sarkozy carried out some of his promised labour market and tax-cutting reforms. He decided not to scrap the 35-hour maximum on the standard workweek (a landmark Socialist law) but rather to use tax relief on overtime pay to moderate the law’s rigidity. Other new business-friendly laws restricted the right to strike and cut off unemployment payments to people who turned down certain job offers. Sarkozy also won narrow approval from the legislature for a constitutional change to limit the presidency to two five-year terms. Exploring Italy and France: Fact or Fiction?

While maintaining Europe as the prime focus of his foreign policy, Sarkozy was relatively pro-American compared with his predecessors. He showed signs of being more accommodating to the United States (especially with his active interest in a positive outcome in Iraq) and of being somewhat more troublesome to some of his euro zone partners (with his criticism of restrictive European Central Bank monetary policy). He also stressed EU complementarity to NATO , friendship with Israel, and a tough attitude toward Iranian nuclear weapons. In July 2007 Sarkozy drew worldwide attention for the prominent part he and his wife Cécilia played in gaining the release of six Bulgarian medics (charged with infecting children with HIV) who had been held in Libya since 1999. While applauding the release, some in France and the EU criticized Sarkozy’s high-profile involvement as well as his wife’s participation. Meanwhile, to the relief of many EU partners, Sarkozy agreed to put forward a revamped EU treaty for approval by the French parliament and not by referendum (as Chirac had tried and failed to do in 2005). His efforts in support of this agreement, the so-called Lisbon Treaty , were rewarded when the parliament ratified it in February 2008.

Sarkozy continued to play a vocal role in European affairs once France assumed the presidency of the EU, which rotates among member countries, that July. The same month, Sarkozy oversaw the launch of the Mediterranean Union, an international organization made up of Mediterranean rim countries in Europe , North Africa , and the Middle East . Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Although the French media had traditionally avoided close examination of the private lives of French leaders, Sarkozy’s personal problems were well known even before his presidency because of the publicity surrounding a temporary separation from Cécilia, his second wife. His divorce from her in October 2007 and his marriage to singer Carla Bruni in February 2008 drew increased media scrutiny. Many in France viewed the interest in Sarkozy’s private life as distasteful and inappropriate, and some accused Sarkozy himself of cultivating a flashy image to distract the public from negative aspects of his administration. David Buchan The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica Having fared poorly in French regional elections in March 2010, the UMP retained control of only 1 of 22 régions.

The results appeared to reflect French voters’ growing dissatisfaction with the president and his conservative party during a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. Domestic support for Sarkozy continued to erode throughout 2011, even as his profile rose internationally, because of his leadership role in the response to the European debt crisis . As the 2012 presidential campaign began in earnest, Sarkozy trailed Socialist challenger François Hollande in opinion polls and attempted to bolster his numbers with a return to the theme of immigration reform. On April 22, 2012, Sarkozy finished a close second to Hollande in the first round of presidential balloting, and the two faced each other again in a runoff two weeks later. On May 6, 2012, Hollande defeated Sarkozy, making Sarkozy only the second French president to fail in a reelection bid since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Although Sarkozy announced that the loss signaled his retirement from political life, it was widely believed that he was simply biding his time for an eventual return.

Sarkozy was considered a possible UMP candidate for the presidency in 2017, but his potential political ambitions were frustrated by a string of legal troubles related to the funding of his 2007 election campaign. In March 2013 he was investigated for improperly extracting donations from Liliane Bettencourt , the elderly, mentally frail heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire. Those proceedings were dropped in October 2013, but information obtained during that investigation, as well as a case involving some €50 million (almost $70 million) in illegal contributions from Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi , led to additional legal woes for Sarkozy and his inner circle. In July 2014 Sarkozy, his lawyer, and a French magistrate were formally charged with corruption. Investigators alleged that Sarkozy had promised the magistrate a plum position in Monaco in exchange for privileged information about charges pending against him. That investigation was suspended in September 2014, just days after Sarkozy announced his intention to seek the UMP presidency at the party congress in November 2014.

He won the leadership contest easily, but legal issues, including a new scandal involving alleged kickbacks from the sale of 45 helicopters to Kazakhstan, threatened to disrupt his political comeback. A strong showing by the UMP in regional elections in March 2015 enhanced Sarkozy’s position, and in May 2015 he led the effort to rebrand the UMP as the Republicans. In the first round of Republican presidential primary voting in November 2016, however, Sarkozy finished a distant third behind former prime ministers François Fillon and Alain Juppé. For the second time in four years, Sarkozy announced that he was withdrawing from politics. President of France | Current Head of State 06.05.2012 - 19:05 | Tags: Nicolas Sarkozy , President of France | Category: All , Europe Leaders François Hollande, President of France (elected on May 6, 2012) François Gérard Georges Hollande (born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who is the President-elect of France.

He also served as the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008 and as a Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze’s 1st Constituency since 1997, and previously represented that seat from 1988 to 1993. He was the Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008, and was the President of the Corrèze General Council from 2008 to 2012. He was elected as President of France on 6 May 2012, defeating the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy, 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 extreme right in local politics”.

The surname “Hollande” is “believed to come from Calvinist ancestors who escaped Holland (the Netherlands) in the 16th century and took the name of their old country.” Hollande was raised Catholic. He attended Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle boarding school, then HEC Paris, École nationale d’administration, and the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Paris Institute of Political Studies). He graduated from ENA in 1980. He lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 while he was a university student. Immediately after graduating, he was employed to work 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, although he would go on to become a Special Adviser to the 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 the 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. Following his re-election as President of the General Council of Corrèze in March 2011, Hollande announced that he would be a candidate in the upcoming primary election to select the Socialist and Radical Left Party presidential nominee. The primary marked the first time that both parties had held an open primary to select a joint nominee at the same time. He initially trailed the front-runner, former Finance Minister and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Following Strauss-Kahn’s arrest on suspicion of sexual assault in New York City in May 2011, Hollande began to lead the opinion polls. His position as front-runner was established just as Strauss-Kahn declared that he would no longer be seeking the nomination. After a series of televised debates throughout September, Hollande topped the ballot in the first round held on 9 October with 39% of the vote, not gaining the 50% required to avoid a second ballot, which he would contest against Martine Aubry, who had come second with 30% of the vote. The second ballot took place on 16 October 2011. Hollande won with 56% of the vote to Aubry’s 43% and thus became the official Socialist and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election. After the primary results, he immediately gained the pledged support of the other contenders for the party’s nomination, including Aubry, Arnaud Montebourg, Manuel Valls and 2007 candidate Ségolène Royal.

Hollande’s presidential campaign was managed by Pierre Moscovici and Stéphane Le Foll, a Member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament respectively. Hollande launched his campaign officially with a rally and major speech at Le Bourget on 22 January 2012 in front of 25,000 people. The main themes of his speech were equality and the regulation of finance, both of which he promised to make a key part of his campaign. On 26 January he outlined a full list of policies in a manifesto containing 60 propositions, including the separation of retail activities from riskier investment-banking businesses; raising taxes for big corporations, banks and the wealthy; creating 60,000 teaching jobs; bringing the official retirement age back down to 60 from 62; creating subsidised jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young; promoting more industry in France by creating a public investment bank; granting marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples; and pulling French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012. On 9 February, he detailed his policies specifically relating to education in a major speech in Orléans.

On 15 February, incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would run for a second and final term, strongly criticising Hollande’s proposals and claiming that he would bring about “economic disaster within two days of taking office” if he won. In his first overseas trip for his campaign, he visited Berlin, Germany, in December 2011 for the Social Democrats Federal Party Congress, at which he met Sigmar Gabriel, Peer Steinbrueck, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Martin Schulz; he also travelled to Belgium before the United Kingdom in February 2012, where he met with Opposition Leader Ed Miliband; and finally Tunisia in May 2012. Opinion polls showed a tight race between the two men in the first round of voting, with most polls showing Hollande comfortably ahead of Sarkozy in a hypothetical second round run-off. The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April. François Hollande came in first place with 28.63% of the vote, and faced Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round run-off.

In the second round of voting on 6 May 2012, François Hollande was elected President of the French Republic with 51.7% of the vote. For over thirty years, his partner was fellow Socialist politician Ségolène Royal, with whom he has four children – Thomas (1984), Clémence (1985), Julien (1987) and Flora (1992). In June 2007, just a month after Royal’s defeat in the French presidential election of 2007, the couple announced that they were separating. A few months after his split from Ségolène Royal was announced, a French website published details of a relationship between Hollande and French journalist Valérie Trierweiler. This was controversial as some considered this to be a breach of France’s strict stance on the privacy of politicians’ personal affairs. In November 2007, Valérie Trierweiler confirmed and openly discussed her relationship with Hollande in an interview with French weekly Télé 7 Jours.

Source: Nicolas Sarkozy, Former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France Nicolas Sarkozy was born in Paris 52 years ago, of a French mother and a father who chose to immigrate to France when his country, Hungary, was invaded by the communist Soviet Union. He grew up in Paris, then in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, where he still lives. His family taught him the values of Gaullism: love of France and the refusal of defeat. Born January 28 1955, Paris Family His father was a Hungarian immigrant who fled in the late 1940s and signed up for the Foreign Legion.

Education Masters degree in private law, 1978, Institute d’Études Politiques de Paris, 1979-81, barrister’s diploma, 1981 Career Barrister 1981-87; mayor, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1983; minister of the budget 1993-94; minister of communication, 1994-95; minister of the interior and security, 2002-04; minister of the economy, finance and industry, 2004; president UMP, November 2004 On personal ambition When he was asked in a television interview whether he dreamt of being president when shaving, Sarkozy replied: “Yes – and not only when shaving.” France.com » Blog Archive Nicolas Sarkozy - France.com Nicolas Sarkozy Family background Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian immigrant father, Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, and a French mother Andrée Mallah. Pál Sárközy was born in 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging to the lower nobility of Hungary.

The family possessed lands and a small castle in the village of Alattyán, near Szolnok, 92 km east of Budapest. Pál Sárközy's father and grandfather held elective offices in the town of Szolnok. Although the Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa family was Protestant, Pál Sárközy's mother, Katalin Tóth de Csáford, grandmother of Nicolas Sarkozy, was from a Catholic aristocratic family. As the Red Army entered Hungary in 1944, the Sárközy family fled to Germany. 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 and meet him in Paris. Pál Sárközy managed to flee 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, in French Algeria, 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 happened to also be Hungarian, sympathised with him and gave him a medical discharge to save him from possible death at the hands of the Vietminh. 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 a stateless person until then), he nonetheless gallicised his Hungarian name into "Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa". Paul Sarkozy moved to Paris where he used his artistic skills to enter the advertising industry. He met Andrée Mallah, Nicolas Sarkozy's mother, in 1949.

Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benedict Mallah, a wealthy urologist and STD specialist with a well-established reputation in the mainly bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benedict Mallah, originally called Aaron Mallah and nicknamed Benico, was born in 1890 in the Sephardic Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece, which at the time had a Jewish majority. According to Jewish genealogical societies, the Mallah family of Salonica anciently came from Spain which they had left in 1492 when the Catholic Monarchs had expelled the Jews. Resettled in Provence, southern France, the family had moved to Salonica a century later. Benico Mallah, the son of a jeweler, left Salonica, then part of the Ottoman Empire, 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), from a bourgeois family of Lyon, whom he married in 1917. Adèle Bouvier, Nicolas Sarkozy's grandmother, was a Catholic like the majority of French people. 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. Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement in Paris and had three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in the textile industry, Nicolas, born in 1955 and François, born in 1957 (an MBA and manager of a healthcare consultancy company. In 1959 Paul Sarkozy left his wife and his three children.

He later remarried twice and had two more children with his second wife. Early life During Sarkozy's childhood, his father refused to give his former 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. His grandfather, a Sephardi Jew by birth, was a convert to Catholicism, and Sarkozy was, accordingly, raised in the Catholic faith of his household. Nicolas Sarkozy, like his brothers, is a baptised and professing Catholic. Sarkozy also said recently that one of his role models was former pope John Paul II. Sarkozy's father Paul did not teach him or his brothers Hungarian. There is no evidence suggesting that there was an attempt to educate the Sarkozy siblings about their paternal ethnic background.

Sarkozy has said that having been abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthy classmates. He suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness of 1.65 m, 5 feet 5 inches, or his family's lack of money, at least relatively to their 17th Arrondissement or Neuilly neighbours), and is said to have harboured a considerable amount of resentment against his absent father. "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood", he said later. Studies Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a state-funded (public) middle and high school in the 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième (equivalent to sixth grade in the US and Year 7 in England and Wales). His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic middle and high school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre pupil[citation needed], but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973.

He enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he read law and graduated with a master's degree in Business law. Paris X – Nanterre had been the starting place for the May '68 student movement and was still a strong birth for leftist student unions. Although described as a quiet student, Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing union of the university where he was very active. After graduating, he briefly attended the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, but did not graduate. After passing the bar exam, he became a lawyer specializing in French business law and family law, skills which he would later put to use in divorcing his first wife and helping his mother take legal action against his father in order to raise alimony. Personal wealth Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of two million euros, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies. Political career He is generally recognized by the right and left as a highly skilled politician and striking orator.

Supporters of Sarkozy within France emphasize his charisma, political innovation and willingness to "make a dramatic break" amidst mounting disaffection against "politics as usual"; some see him as wanting to depart from traditional French social and economic principles in favor of American-style economic reform. Overall, he is generally considered to be somewhat more pro-U.S. than most French politicians. Since November 2004, he has been president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France's major right 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 man 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 Cults (in this guise 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.

Career Sarkozy's political career began at the age of 22, when he became a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy and exclusive western suburb of Paris (in the Hauts-de-Seine département). 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 in the time, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become mayor, and asked Sarkozy to organise his campaign. Instead Sarkozy profited from a short illness of Pasqua to propel himself into the office of mayor.He was the youngest ever 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 the National 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] However, in 1995 he spurned Chirac and backed 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. It is widely believed that ever since 1995 Chirac has considered Sarkozy's siding with Balladur as a form of treason, and that the two men now loathe one another.

However, he came back after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary election, as number 2 of the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin resigned, in 1999, he took the lead 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 the widely acknowledged friction between the two.[citation needed] Following Jacques Chirac's 14th of July 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. Following the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Sarkozy was moved to the position of 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. It became increasingly apparent that Sarkozy would go on to seek the presidency in 2007; in an often-repeated comment made on television channel France 2, when asked by a journalist whether he thought about the presidential election when he shaved in the morning, Sarkozy commented, “not just when I shave”.[9] In November 2004 after party elections, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned his position as 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 Legion 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,[10] he had had to resign as a deputy when he had become 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. First term as Minister of the Interior Towards the end of his first term as Minister of the Interior, in 2004, Sarkozy was the most popular and also the most unpopular conservative politician in France, according to polls conducted at the beginning of 2004. His “tough on crime” policies, which included increasing the police presence on the streets and introducing monthly crime performance ratings, were popular with many and unpopular for many others.

However, he was criticized for putting forward legislation which can be questioned as an infringement on civil rights, and adversely affected disadvantaged sections of the population.[citation needed] Sarkozy has sought to ease the sometimes tense relationships between the general French population and the Muslim community. Unlike the Catholic Church in France with their official leaders or Protestants with their umbrella organisations, the French Muslim community had a lack of structure with no group that could legitimately deal with the French government on their behalf. Sarkozy felt that the foundation of such an organisation was desirable. He supported the foundation in May 2003 of the private non-profit Conseil français du culte musulman (“French Council of Muslim Worship”), an organisation meant to be representative of French Muslims.[11] In addition, Sarkozy has suggested amending the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, mostly in order to be able to finance mosques and other Muslim institutions with public funds[12] so that they are less reliant on money from outside of France. Minister of Finance During his short appointment as Minister of Finance, Sarkozy was responsible for introducing a number of policies.

The degree to which this reflected libéralisme (a hands-off approach to running the economy) or more traditional French state dirigisme (intervention) is controversial. He resigned the day following his election as president of the UMP. * In September 2004, Sarkozy oversaw the reduction of the government ownership stake in France Télécom from 50.4% to 41%.[13] * Sarkozy backed a partial nationalisation of the engineering company Alstom decided by his predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003.[14] * Sarkozy reached an agreement with the major retail chains in France to concertedly lower prices on household goods by an average of 2%; the success of this measure is disputed, with studies suggesting that the decrease was closer to 1%.[15] * Taxes: Sarkozy avoided taking a position on the ISF (solidarity tax on wealth). This is considered an ideological symbol by many on the Left and Right. Some in the business world and on the Liberal Right, such as Alain Madelin, wanted it abolished.

For Sarkozy, that would have risked being categorised by the Left as a gift to the richest classes of society at a time of economic difficulties.[16] So Sarkozy preferred reducing the ISF with the bouclier fiscal. Second term as Minister of the Interior During his second term at the Ministry of the Interior, Sarkozy was initially more discreet about his ministerial activities: instead of focusing on his own topic of law and order, many of his declarations addressed wider issues, since he was expressing his opinions as head of the UMP party. However, the civil unrest in autumn 2005 put law enforcement in the spotlight again. Sarkozy was accused of having provoked the unrest by calling young delinquents from housing projects "scum" ("racaille") in Argenteuil near Paris. After the accidental death of two youths, which sparked the riots, Sarkozy first blamed it on "hoodlums" and gangsters.

These remarks were sharply criticised by many on the left wing and by a member of his own government, Delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities Azouz Begag.[17] After the rioting, he made a number of announcements on future policy: selection of immigrants, greater tracking of immigrants, and a reform on the 1945 ordinance government justice measures for young delinquents. Action as UMP's leader Sarkozy currently is the president of UMP, the French conservative party, elected with 85% of the vote. During his presidency, the number of members has significantly increased. In 2005, he supported a "yes" vote in the French referendum on the European Constitution. Throughout 2005, Sarkozy became increasingly vocal in calling for radical changes in France's economic and social policies.

These calls culminated in an interview with Le Monde on 8 September 2005, during which he claimed that the French had been misled for 30 years by false promises, and denounced what he considers to be unrealistic policies.[18] Among other issues: * he called for a simplified and “fairer” taxation system, with fewer loopholes and a maximum taxation rate (all direct taxes combined) at 50% of revenue; * he approved measures reducing or denying social support to unemployed workers who refuse work offered to them; * he pressed for a reduction in the budget deficit, claiming that the French state has been living off credit for some time. Such policies are what are called in France libéral (that is, in favour of laissez-faire economic policies, although this judgment is made by French standards) or, with a pejorative undertone, ultra-libéral. Sarkozy rejects this label of libéral and prefers to call himself a pragmatist instead. Sarkozy opened another avenue of controversy by declaring that he wanted a reform of the immigration system, with quotas designed to admit the skilled workers needed by the French economy.

He also wants to reform the current French system for foreign students, saying that it enables foreign students to take open-ended curricula in order to obtain residency in France; instead, he wants to select the best students to the best curricula in France. In early 2006, the French parliament adopted a controversial bill known as DADVSI, which reforms French copyright law. Since his party was divided on the issue, Sarkozy stepped in and organised meetings between various parties involved. Later, groups such as the Odebi League and EUCD.info alleged that Sarkozy personally and unofficially supported certain amendments to the law, which enacted strong penalties against designers of peer-to-peer systems. Controversy Generally speaking, Sarkozy is a bête noire of the Left, and is also criticized by some on the right, most vocally by the supporters of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, such as Jean-Louis Debré, but also by social Catholics such as Christine Boutin; Boutin however, in the end, gave up her presidential bid and became a political advisor to Sarkozy.

Critics have accused him of being an authoritarian demagogue, ready to trade away civil liberties for political gains.[19] Some of these accusations are echoed by French civil rights organisations.[citation needed] He is also accused by the Left of being a populist who favours far-right ideas.[20] Kärcher remark In the midst of a tense period and following a shooting that killed an 11-year-old boy in the banlieue of La Courneuve in June 2005, he quoted a local resident and vowed to clean the area out “with a Kärcher” (nettoyer la cité au Kärcher, Kärcher being a well-known brand of pressure cleaning equipment), and two days before the 2005 Paris riots he referred to the rioters as voyous (thugs) and racaille, a slang term which can be translated into English as scum, dregs or riff-raff, this being criticised as being too hard on the rioters. Separation of powers As Minister of the Interior, Sarkozy has made bold statements following heinous crimes reported in the media.

As a consequence, he has been accused in certain cases of failing to respect the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary by trying to apply pressure in certain cases. Most famously, he was criticised, not only by the left-wing Syndicat de la magistrature judges' union, but also by the centrist Union syndicale des magistrats for attacks on the independence of the judiciary. In September 2005 some youths were acquitted of an arson attack on a police station in Pau for lack of proof and Sarkozy was accused of having pushed for a hasty inquiry—Sarkozy had vowed that the perpetrators would be arrested within three months. On 22 June 2005, he announced to law enforcement officials that he had questioned the Minister of Justice about the future of “the judge” who had freed a man on parole, enabling him to commit a murder. These comments were criticised by both moderate and left-wing magistrates since the decision had been made by three judges.

Sarkozy has personal friendships with some of the most powerful figures in the French business world; for example, Martin Bouygues (from the Bouygues group, owner of the TF1 channel, as well as telecommunications and public works companies) and Bernard Arnault (from LVMH) were his marriage witnesses. His brother, Guillaume, is a senior executive of the MEDEF, the foremost business union in France; in 2005, he renounced running for the top position of that union because he said he did not want to hinder his brother's political career. Religion and state Sarkozy, a Catholic, has caused controversy because of his views on the relationship between religion and state. In 2004, he published a book called La République, les religions, l'espérance (“The Republic, Religions, and Hope”),in which he argued that the young should not be brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also advocated reducing the separation of church and state, arguing for the government subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society. He flatly opposes financing of religious institutions with funds from outside France.

After meeting with Tom Cruise, Sarkozy was criticised by some for meeting with a member of the Church of Scientology, which is classified as a dangerous sect in France. War in Iraq Nicolas Sarkozy, like almost all French politicians, disapproved of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but was nonetheless critical of the way Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin expressed France's opposition to the war. Talking at the French-American Foundation in Washington, D.C. on 12 September 2006, he denounced what he called the & quot;French arrogance" and said: "It is bad manners to embarrass one's allies or sound like one is taking delight in their troubles."[31] He also added: "We must never again turn our disagreements into a crisis." This speech, given without the assent of the French president by a member of the French government traveling abroad (Sarkozy was still Minister of the Interior), was criticized by many in France.

Jacques Chirac reportedly said in private that Sarkozy's speech was "appalling" and "a shameful act".[31] Regularisation of immigrant families Sarkozy issued a memorandum (the 'circulaire Sarkozy') on 13 June 2006. In this decision sent to all prefects of France (his representatives in the provinces), he proposed to hand some immigration papers to immigrant families with children integrated in French schools. A strict series of conditions were listed in order to accept the regularisation of the situation of these families (proofs of integration in the country, proof of job, etc.). This offer attracted a large number of applications (around 25,000) handed to police services, usually under the advice of charities of specialised social associations. Most of the files were refused because the minister had fixed, beforehand, a number of "about 6000" files to be accepted, whatever happened. The remaining 20,000 or so people have however been carefully registered in police files, including their personal address and child's school (one of the criteria was providing school certificates). Some consider the situation to be a possible 'trap' for integrated immigrants.

View on genetic predispositions A few weeks before the first round of the 2007 presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy said during an interview with philosopher Michel Onfray that he thinks disorders such as paedophilia and depression have a genetic as well as social basis, famously stating "I don't agree with you, I'd be inclined to think that one is born a paedophile, and it is actually a problem that we do not know how to cure this disease"; he also claimed that suicides among youth was linked to genetic predispositions by stating, "I don't want to give parents a complex. It's not exclusively the parents' fault every time a youngster commits suicide." These claims were criticized by a few scientists, including geneticist Axel Kahn. Marriages, divorce and separation On 23 September 1982 he married Corsican-born Marie-Dominique Culioli, daughter of a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They have two sons, Pierre (born in 1985) and Jean (born in 1987). Sarkozy's marriage witness was the prominent right wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent.

Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they had already been separated for some years. Culioli continues to be a practicing Catholic and a charismatic and affirms that she still prays fervently for Sarkozy. As mayor of Neuilly, Sarkozy met Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (great-granddaughter of composer Isaac Albéniz and of a Russian father), when he officiated at her weddingto TV host Jacques Martin. In 1989, Ciganer-Albeniz left Martin for Sarkozy. After a divorce lasting four months, Sarkozy married her in October 1996 (with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault). They have one son, Louis, born in 1997. Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Ciganer-Albeniz acting as a sort of chief aide for her husband. On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that Ciganer-Albeniz had left Sarkozy for French-Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New York..

There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin. This led Sarkozy to sue the paper.In late 2005, the press reported that Sarkozy was in a relationship with Anne Fulda, a journalist from Le Figaro. In January 2006, a reconciliation with Ciganer-Albeniz took place. Ciganer-Albeniz and Sarkozy are currently believed to be living together. In early 2006, Sarkozy suggested to the press that he had welcomed Ciganer-Albeniz back from the USA, although the exact circumstances of the reconciliation are not known. Candidacy for President On 14 January 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was chosen by the UMP to be its candidate in the 2007 presidential election. Sarkozy, who was running unopposed, won 98% of the votes. Of the 327,000 UMP members who could vote, 69% participated in the online ballot. In February 2007 Sarkozy appeared on a televised debate on TF1 where he expressed his support for affirmative action for minorities and the freedom to work overtime, but his opposition to homosexual marriage.

On 7 February, Nicolas Sarkozy finally decided in favour of a projected second, non-nuclear, aircraft carrier for the national Navy (adding to the nuclear Charles de Gaulle), during an official visit in Toulon with Defence Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie. "This would allow permanently having an operational ship, taking into account the constraints of maintenance", he explained.[43] This new view on the second aircraft carrier issue comes in conflict with a January report, where he was against a second carrier.[44] On 21 March President Jacques Chirac announced his support for Sarkozy, adding that he had his vote. Chirac pointed out that Sarkozy had been chosen as presidential candidate for the ruling UMP party, and said: "So it is totally natural that I give him my vote and my support." To focus on his campaign, Sarkozy stepped down as interior minister on 26 March. During the campaign, rival candidates had accused Sarkozy of being a "candidate for brutality" and of presenting overly hardline views about France's future.He was also criticized by opponents for allegedly courting conservative voters in policy-making in a bid to capitalise on right-wing sentiments among some communities.

However, his popularity was sufficient to see him polling as the frontrunner throughout the later campaign period, consistently ahead of rival Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal. The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy came in first with 31.18% of the votes, ahead of Ségolène Royal of the Socialists with 25.87%. In the second round, Sarkozy came out on top to win the election with 53.06% of the votes ahead of Ségolène Royal with 46.94%. In his speech immediately following the announcement of the election results, Sarkozy stressed the need for France's modernisation, but also called for national unity, mentioning that Royal was in his thoughts. In that speech, he claimed “The French have chosen to break with the ideas, habits and behaviour of the past. I will restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.” First term as president (2007-) On May 16, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy will become the 23rd Président of French Republic.

The power transfer from Jacques Chirac is scheduled for the morning of 16 May at 11:00 am (9:00 UTC) at the Élysée Palace, where he will be given the nuclear codes of the nuclear deterrence and be presented the Grand Master's Collar, symbol of his new function of Grand Master of the Legion of Honor. At that point he will become President. The presidential motorcade will then go from Élysée Palace to the Champs-Élysées for a public ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Then the new president will go to the Hôtel de Ville of Paris to be welcomed by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë. In the afternoon, the new president will fly to Berlin to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The same day, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin will resign. Sarkozy will appoint his first Prime Minister on May 17. In a break with traditi on, the first foreign statesman that the new President met following his election was the British Prime Minister Tony Blair on May 11.

The first foreign statesman that he is scheduled to meet upon his taking up the office of President will be Germany's Angela Merkel, on May 16. Posted on May 15, 2007 Profile: Nicolas Sarkozy - BBC News BBC News Image copyright AFP Image caption Nicolas Sarkozy was France's president from 2007-2012 Nicolas Sarkozy has announced he wants to run for the French presidency again, despite ongoing corruption investigations - and the challenge he faces from two former prime ministers hoping to gain the Republican party nomination. Mr Sarkozy, 61, became France's first president not to be re-elected for a second term since Valery Giscard d'Estaing in 1981. But now the man who beat him, Socialist leader Francois Hollande, is the most unpopular French president in modern times, opinion polls suggest. Depicting France as on the "edge of an abyss", Mr Sarkozy has said he cannot allow himself to leave his country "between the drama of the FN (far-right National Front) and the end of Socialism".

Mr Sarkozy secured the leadership of his party in a party poll in November 2014, but fell short of the 70% of the vote that he had hoped would give him a launch pad to challenge for the presidency in 2017. In 2015 he changed the party's name from Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) to The Republicans. He continues to be dogged by inquiries that have their roots in the funding of his successful 2007 election campaign. Tied in legal knots Mr Sarkozy is formally the target of a judicial investigation that might well end in a trial in two separate cases. An anti-corruption team in Nanterre, in the western suburbs of Paris, placed him under formal investigation in 2014 on suspicion of trying to influence senior judges. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Temporary detention by police in July was a new low point for Mr Sarkozy His 15-hour stay in policy custody on 1 July 2014 was unprecedented for an ex-president in France. His supporters openly accuse his political opponents of trying to sabotage his return to the political mainstream.

The allegation is that he tried to obtain details from a magistrate about legal proceedings against him in 2013, when his campaign finances came under suspicion. The investigation could lead to a charge of influence-peddling. Mr Sarkozy is suspected of having promised a prestigious role in Monaco to a magistrate, Gilbert Azibert, in exchange for information. Mr Sarkozy's lawyer Thierry Herzog and Mr Azibert were also placed under formal investigation. And a case called Bygmalion could also damage Mr Sarkozy's chances of a comeback. The UMP is suspected of having fraudulently covered up illegal campaign funding in 2012. In February 2016 Mr Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation in this case too. In 2013 Mr Sarkozy was also charged with taking advantage of the frail, elderly L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. She was allegedly persuaded to donate big sums to the UMP. The case against him was later dropped . Another inquiry concerns allegations that Mr Sarkozy received campaign funding from the late Libyan strongman Col Muammar Gaddafi.

Republicans party presidential primaries are scheduled for 2016 and Mr Sarkozy is likely to face tough rivals - former Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his own former Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. Celebrity lifestyle Mr Sarkozy kept a low profile after his defeat by Mr Hollande in the 2012 election. He appeared to rule out any return to frontline politics, devoting himself instead to family life and lucrative appearances on the international conference circuit. Critics nicknamed his presidency "bling-bling", seeing his leadership style as too brash, celebrity-driven and hyperactive for a role steeped in tradition and grandeur. That celebrity image was reinforced by his marriage to supermodel and singer Carla Bruni in 2008. The couple had a daughter, Giulia, a few months before the 2012 election. Mr Sarkozy, who is twice divorced, also has a son from his second marriage and two sons from his first marriage.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption His relationship with Carla Bruni became the main media focus after he took power Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Sarkozy is a keen jogger - here pictured in a Paris street Image copyright Getty Images Image caption In 2005 violence gripped the Paris suburbs and several other cities while Mr Sarkozy was interior minister Tough on immigration A veteran conservative politician, Mr Sarkozy angered human rights activists with his stance on immigration. As interior minister he notoriously talked of hosing down troubled housing estates, describing young delinquents in the Paris suburbs as racaille, or rabble. That blunt comment - made before the 2005 riots - encouraged some critics to put him in the same category as the then far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Later as president he pushed through measures to curb illegal immigration - including highly controversial mass deportations of Roma (Gypsies). At the same time, he advocated positive discrimination to help reduce youth unemployment - a challenge to those wedded to the French idea of equality. Towards the end of his presidency, unemployment claims surged to their highest level in 12 years.

Yet he had been at the forefront of the European response to the global economic crisis in 2008 and helped establish the G20 summits involving the world's biggest economies. He also saw through unpopular, but arguably necessary, reforms: raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 , relaxing the 35-hour working week , overhauling the universities and altering the tax system to encourage overtime and home ownership. Political fighter On the international stage, Mr Sarkozy was often described as an Atlanticist, though he opposed the war in Iraq. He was credited with brokering an end to the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia , and his performance while holding the six-month EU rotating presidency is remembered as assertive. In response to the global financial crisis of 2008 , he vowed to punish speculators and advocated a strong state role in the economy. Leading the European Union response, he developed a close working relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Since Mr Sarkozy's fall from power, Carla Bruni's career as a singer has continued Immigrant roots Unlike most of the French ruling class, Mr Sarkozy did not go to the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, but trained as a lawyer. The son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother of Greek-Jewish origin, he was baptised a Roman Catholic and grew up in Paris. He began his political career as mayor of the affluent Paris suburb of Neuilly from 1983 to 2002. National attention came in 1993, when he personally intervened to free infants held hostage by a deranged man in a kindergarten, who was later killed by police commandos. Initially a protege of Jacques Chirac , he became the right-hand man of Prime Minister Edouard Balladur in 1993-95, serving as budget minister. When he backed Mr Balladur for the presidency in 1995, the decision caused a lasting rift with Mr Chirac, the successful candidate.

Mr Chirac famously chided him in his memoirs for being "irritable, rash, overconfident and allowing for no doubt, least of all regarding himself". France's ex-President Sarkozy put under investigation - BBC News France's ex-President Sarkozy put under investigation 2 July 2014 Media captionFormer French President Sarkozy placed under investigation Ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been placed under formal investigation over alleged influence peddling. He appeared before a judge in Paris late on Tuesday after 15 hours of questioning by anti-corruption police. This is thought to be the first time a former French head of state has been held in police custody. Mr Sarkozy's lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and senior prosecutor Gilbert Azibert were also placed under formal investigation over the allegations. There was no word on the questioning of a second prosecutor, Patrick Sassoust, who had also been in custody. Image copyright AFP Image caption The former president is expected to be interviewed about the case on French radio and TV The allegation against Mr Sarkozy is that he sought insider information from a judge regarding an investigation into illegal campaign financing. Mr Sarkozy denies any wrongdoing and is due to be interviewed live on French TV on Wednesday evening.

He has received support from several high-ranking party colleagues. Former PM Alain Juppe wrote on his Twitter feed : "I'm thinking in friendship of Nicolas Sarkozy: he is of course presumed innocent." President Francois Hollande also stressed the presumption of innocence, his spokesman said. French press review Taking in the "shock wave", Le Figaro, the newspaper of choice for many French conservatives, asks if Nicolas Sarkozy is not being singled out for political reasons. Yves Threard suggests that French judges are seeking revenge for criticisms he made of the justice system while in office, when he famously described magistrates as indistinguishable "little peas". Writing in the centre-left daily Liberation, Eric Decouty argues that Mr Sarkozy must take responsibility for his actions if he wishes to return to politics. "Even if the former head of state has never made morality his chief virtue, he cannot scorn certain values essential to our democracy," he says. The French justice system may now be doing the "dirty work" of Mr Sarkozy's own party, Patrice Chabanet suggests in an editorial for regional daily Le Journal de la Haute-Marne .

Other figures in the party like former prime ministers Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe "want to turn the page of Sarkozyism", he argues. Even if Mr Sarkozy emerges from his legal troubles exonerated of blame, the cost to his political career may be too great, he suggests. When a suspect is placed under formal investigation, he or she is then examined by a judge, who determines whether there is sufficient evidence for the suspect to be charged. The step often, but not always, leads to trial. Influence-peddling can be punished by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros (£120,000; $205,000). 'Not a lot' Mr Sarkozy was released from custody around midnight (22:00 GMT) after appearing in court in Paris. He had been brought to the court from the judicial police office in Nanterre, west of the French capital, where he had been interrogated.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Lawyer Thierry Herzog (l) and magistrate Gilbert Azibert (r) are being investigated along with Mr Sarkozy (c) Paul-Albert Iweins, the lawyer representing Mr Herzog, said the case rested only on "phone taps... whose legal basis will be strongly contested". "There's not a lot in this dossier, since none of the material elements of what I've seen, and what we could contest, support the accusations," he added. Investigators are trying to find out whether Mr Sarkozy, 59, who was president from 2007 to 2012, had promised a prestigious role in Monaco to Mr Azibert, in exchange for information about an investigation into illegal campaign funding. He was never given the job.

Investigations into Sarkozy July 2014: Placed under formal investigation on suspicion of peddling influence to obtain details from a magistrate about legal proceedings against him in 2013 October 2013: A criminal investigation into allegations he solicited secret campaign financing in 2007 from France's richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, is dropped April 2013: Judges open an inquiry into allegations that the Gaddafi regime helped finance his 2007 election campaign February 2014: Named as a witness in investigation into funding for Edouard Balladur's unsuccessful presidential bid in 1995 A number of other inquiries are under way into wrongdoing by senior officials during his presidency, in which he has not figured directly The inquiry into funding is looking into whether Mr Sarkozy received illegal donations for the 2007 election campaign from late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Mr Sarkozy is hoping to challenge again for the presidency in 2017 and the allegations are seen as a blow to his hopes of returning to office.

His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was given a suspended prison sentence in 2011 for embezzlement and breach of trust while he was mayor of Paris but he was never questioned in custody. Analysis: The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris Mr Sarkozy is a step closer to coming to trial. The judges investigating this have decided that there is a case to answer although a trial is not inevitable. It does mean that there is a much bigger, darker cloud of suspicion hanging over him. Worried by the prying of investigators into claims of illegal party fund-raising, it is alleged that Mr Sarkozy used a judge as point-man in the High Court of Appeal to tell him how proceedings against him were progressing. More serious is whether this judge tried to influence decisions in Mr Sarkozy's favour. The former president was expected to announce his political comeback later this year, and his supporters are extremely suspicious about the timing of this latest development. It will be much harder now to launch a bid for leadership of the centre-right opposition with the prospect of criminal proceedings hanging over him.

Question: Who was President of France immediately before Nicolas Sarkozy?
Answer: Jacques Chirac