Nicolas Sarkozy, the first son of an immigrant to become president of France, held high-profile positions in French public life including interior minister, finance minister, and mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine. He became president in 2007 after winning the general election with 53% of the vote.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s full name is Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa. On May 16, 2007, he became the first son of an immigrant to become president of France. Before becoming president, Sarkozy held a number of high-profile positions in French public life. Perhaps most notably, he held the position of interior minister twice (in 2002 – 2004 and in 2005 – 2007), finance minister (2004), budget minister (1993 – 1994), president of the general council of the Hauts- de-Seine department (2004 – 2007) and mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine (1983 – 2007). Since 2004, Sarkozy has also headed the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), a centre-right Gaullist party.
Born on January 28, 1955, Nicolas Sarkozy grew up in the 17th arrondissement of Paris and Neuilly-sur-Seine, an affluent area west of Paris located in the Île-de-France region. Although his family has Jewish roots, he and his two brothers were baptized Catholics. A capable. if not a brilliant student, Sarkozy graduated in 1973 and enrolled the same year at the Université Paris X Nanterre. Here he earned a master’s degree in private law and subsequently passed the bar exams, becoming a barrister in 1981.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s first public office came when, at the age of twenty-eight, he was elected mayor of his hometown Neuilly-sur-Seine, an affluent suburb of Paris. His tenure as mayor is best remembered for his handling of the 1993 “human bomb” incident at a local kindergarten. Sarkozy negotiated personally with a man who took children hostage at a local school. The man was later killed by the police and the children were released. The same year, Sarkozy took on his first roles of truly public prominence. At the time he became both the budget minister and the prime minister’s spokesman. During this period, he was considered the protégé and political heir of Jacques Chirac, the French president.
In the 1995 general election, Sarkozy caused a political stir when he distanced himself from Chirac to support Balladur, the prime minister he spoke for. When Chirac won the election, Sarkozy found himself on the periphery of power. However, upon his re-election in 2002, Chirac first appointed Sarkozy as interior minister in the Raffarin government, then, in 2004, as finance minister. The same year, Sarkozy signaled his intention to run for president in 2007 by running and winning the race to become leader of the UMP, a series of circumstances which made his position as finance minister untenable and therefore he resigned from the cabinet. . However, he was reinstalled as interior minister in the Dominique de Villepin government of 2005.
On January 14, 2007, Sarkozy was chosen by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) as a candidate for that year’s elections. He won the first round of the general election with 31.18% of the popular vote and got 53% of the vote in the second round, compared to 48% for his socialist rival Segolene Royal. On May 16, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy became the sixth president of the French Fifth Republic at the Elysée Palace.
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