Chirac, Jacques René

French right-of-centre Gaullist politician and head of state, president from 1995 and prime minister 1974–76 and 1986–88, ‘co-habiting’ on the second occasion with the socialist president François Mitterrand. Chirac led the Gaullist party 1974–95, refounding it in 1976 as the Rally for the Republic (RPR), now part of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). He also served as the first elected mayor of Paris 1977–95. In 2003 Chirac fell out with US president George W Bush over the US-led war against Iraq, which France refused to support, preferring a UN solution.

After converting the RPR to more free-market economic policies and to further European integration, Chirac led the Right to a narrow electoral victory in the 1986 parliamentary elections. Sharing power with a socialist president, François Mitterrand, as prime minister he brought in major privatizations but ceded ground over planned nationality and university reforms. He resigned as prime minister after Mitterrand defeated him in the 1988 presidential elections. In 1993 he declined the premiership (which went to his former finance minister Edouard Balladur), but in May 1995 was finally elected president, defeating the socialist Lionel Jospin. As president, his decision to temporarily resume French Pacific nuclear testing in late 1995 was controversial, and the government became unpopular over welfare cutbacks – linked to meeting the Maastricht criteria for European Monetary Union. Chirac miscalculated in calling early parliamentary elections in June 1997, the Left's victory forcing him into ‘co-habitation’ with a government led by Lionel Jospin.