President François Mitterrand, a Socialist, for example, was forced to cohabit with the neo-Gaullist ( right wing ) Jacques Chirac, who became his prime minister from 1986 to 1988.

Jacques Chirac was reelected in 2002, mainly because his socialist rival Lionel Jospin was defeated by the extreme right wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.

As a young man, Grimoard became a Benedictine monk in the small Priory of Chirac, near his home, which was a dependency of the ancient Abbey of St. Victor near Marseille, and he was sent there for his novitiate.

After his profession of monastic vows, he was ordained a priest in his own monastery in Chirac.

President Chirac was first elected in 1995 and again in 2002.

At that time, there was no limit on the number of terms, so Chirac could have run again, but chose not to.

Chirac was an only child ( his elder sister, Jacqueline, died in infancy before his birth ), and was educated in Paris at the Lycée Carnot and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.

Chirac trained as a reserve military officer in armoured cavalry at Saumur, where he was ranked first in his year.

In April 1962, Chirac was appointed head of the personal staff of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou.

Although Chirac was well-situated in de Gaulle's entourage, being related by marriage to the general's sole companion at the time of the Appeal of 18 June 1940, he was more of a " Pompidolian " than a " Gaullist ".

On 27 February 1974, after the resignation of Raymond Marcellin, Chirac was appointed Minister of the Interior.

At the age of 41, Chirac stood out as the very model of the jeunes loups (" young wolves ") of French politics, but he was faced with the hostility of the " Barons of Gaullism " who considered him a traitor for his role during the previous presidential campaign.

However, a controversial judicial decision in 1999 granted Chirac immunity while he was president of France.

On 15 December 2011, Chirac was found guilty in two related cases, involving 19 totally or partially fake jobs created for his benefit by the RPR Party, which he led as Paris mayor from 1977 to 1995.

He was told by Mitterrand, before his death, that the latter had dined with Chirac before the election.

After 1981, the relationship between the two men became tense, with Giscard, even though he was in the same government coalition as Chirac, criticising Chirac's actions openly.

It has been said during other student crises that this event strongly affected Jacques Chirac, who was hereafter careful about possible police violence during such demonstrations ( i. e. maybe explaining part of the decision to " promulgate without applying " the First Employment Contract ( CPE ) after large student demonstrations against it ).

" Jacques Foccart, who had also co-founded the Gaullist Service d ' Action Civique ( SAC, dissolved by Mitterrand in 1982 ) along with Charles Pasqua, and who was a key component of the " Françafrique " system, was again called to the Elysée Palace when Chirac won the 1995 presidential election.

While he still was mayor of Paris ( since 1977 ), Chirac went to Abidjan ( Côte d ' Ivoire ) where he supported President Houphouët-Boigny ( 1960 – 1993 ), although the latter was being called a " thief " by the local population.

France immediately severely denounced the coup, and backed by the 1978 defense agreement with the Comoros, President Jacques Chirac ordered his special forces to retake the island.

This device has been used in recent years by both François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac.

In the 2002 French presidential election, the two contenders described by the media as having the possibility to win were Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin, who represented the largest two political parties in France at the time.

* August 25 – Jacques Chirac resigns as Prime Minister of France ; he is succeeded by Raymond Barre.

Chirac is the grandfather of Martin Rey-Chirac by the relationship of Claude with French judoka Thierry Rey.

Inspired by General Charles de Gaulle, Chirac started to pursue a civil service career in the 1950s.

As prime minister, Chirac quickly set about persuading the Gaullists that, despite the social reforms proposed by President Giscard, the basic tenets of Gaullism, such as national and European independence, would be retained.

Investigations concerning the running of Paris's city hall, the number of whose municipal employees jumped by 25 % from 1977 to 1995 ( with 2, 000 out of approximately 35, 000 coming from the Corrèze region where Chirac had held his seat as deputy ), as well as a lack of financial transparency ( marchés publics ) and the communal debt, were thwarted by the legal impossibility of questioning him as president.

The conditions of the privatisation of the Parisian water network, acquired very cheaply by the Générale and the Lyonnaise des Eaux, then directed by Jérôme Monod, a close friend of Chirac, were also criticised.

Although it has been often interpreted by historians as the struggle between two rival French right-wing families ( the Bonapartists, represented by Chirac, and the Orleanists, represented by VGE ), both figures in fact were members of the Liberal, Orleanist tradition, according to historian Alain-Gérard Slama.

Furthermore, confronted by anti-colonialist movements in New Caledonia, Prime Minister Chirac ordered a military intervention against the separatists in the Ouvéa cave, leading to several tragic deaths.

During the 1995 presidential campaign, Chirac criticised the " sole thought " ( pensée unique ) of neoliberalism represented by his challenger on the right and promised to reduce the " social fracture ", placing himself more to the center and thus forcing Balladur to radicalise himself.

On the domestic front, neo-liberal economic austerity measures introduced by Chirac and his conservative prime minister Alain Juppé, including budgetary cutbacks, proved highly unpopular.

The Socialist Party ( PS ), joined by other parties on the left, soundly defeated Chirac's conservative allies, forcing Chirac into a new period of cohabitation with Jospin as prime minister ( 1997 – 2002 ), which lasted five years.

Chirac vainly attempted to rally Gaullists behind Prime minister Pierre Messmer.

In 1995, Pierre and Chantal Touvier appealed to French President Jacques Chirac, asking for their father's release for reasons of ill health.

After the 2002 French presidential election, in which far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen arrived second behind conservative candidate Jacques Chirac, many analysts put the blame of the surprising result on working class, accused of engaging themselves in " protest vote ", that is in support of fringe candidates belonging to the far-left or the far-right, or even to people who present themselves as alien to the political world ( in France, environmentalist René Dumont in 1974, comedian Coluche in 1981 — but he withdrew his candidacy before the elections — environmentalist Pierre Rabhi who unsuccessfully tried to present himself in 2002, as well as TV showman Nicolas Hulot who almost stood for the election for 2007, before putting aside his idea, thus leaving electoral space for José Bové, a figure of the alterglobalization movement who recently decided to present himself as an independent candidate ).

In 1975, he purchased from Jean Prouvost the great conservative newspaper le Figaro ( with the help of Pierre Juillet and Marie-France Garaud, then adviser of Jacques Chirac ), in 1976 the popular daily France-Soir, and in 1980 acquired " L ' Aurore " from the estate of Marcel Boussac.

After the poor results of the election, Chirac broke with Garaud and Juillet.

Counsellor of Jacques Chirac alongside Marie-France Garaud, he was in charge of the organisation of Chirac's campaign for the 1981 presidential election, won by the candidate of the Socialist Party ( PS ), François Mitterrand ( 1981 – 1995 ).

François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac are the only Presidents to date who have served a full two terms ( 14 years for the former, 12 years for the latter ).

Chirac is the second-longest serving President of France ( two full terms, the first of seven years and the second of five years ), after François Mitterrand.

During the 1988 presidential campaign, he refused to choose publicly between the two right-wing candidates, his two former Prime Ministers Jacques Chirac and Raymond Barre.

The French public appeared to have laid more of the blame on President Jacques Chirac, who allegedly said that " the only worse food than British food is Finnish " which is widely believed to have offended two Finnish members of the International Olympic Committee.

French Presidents from Georges Pompidou to Jacques Chirac have enjoyed touring Paris in the two 4-door convertible Citroën SM présidentielle models, also prepared by Chapron.

The 2002 French presidential election consisted of a first round election on 21 April 2002, and a runoff election between the top two candidates ( Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen ) on 5 May 2002.

Under the Fifth Republic, presidents Valéry Giscard d ' Estaing and Jacques Chirac have both been classed on the Orléanist tradition of the three French right-wing families identified by historian René Rémond ( Bonapartism and Legitimism being the two others ).

By contrast, his successor Jacques Chirac lived throughout his two terms in office ( 1995 – 2007 ) in the Élysée apartments with his wife Bernadette.

The Socialists being weakened after the 14 years of Mitterrand's presidency, the main competition was within the right, between Balladur and Chirac, two Neo-Gaullists.

As the UDF list, led by Simone Veil, obtained a very good result compared with RPR's score, the quarrels between the two parties and the rivalry between Giscard d ' Estaing and Chirac contributed, in 1981, to the defeat of the incumbent UDF president who ran for a second term.

A state funeral followed on 16 June 2009 in Libreville which was attended by nearly two dozen African heads of state, including several of the continent's strongmen who themselves have ruled for decades, and by Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac — the current and former French presidents ( and the only Western heads of state to attend ).

The Socialists being weakened after the 14 years of Mitterrand's presidency, the main contest was the competition in the right, between Balladur and Chirac, two Neo-Gaullists.

For the previous two years he had been diplomatic adviser to President Chirac.

In this, in spite of positive polls at the beginning of the campaign, he came the third behind the two protagonists of the " cohabitation ": the Socialist President François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac.

** Their two daughters, Claude Chirac and Laurence ( see Jacques Chirac )

He was Minister of Health for almost two years in Dominique de Villepin's government under President Jacques Chirac, then Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Solidarity in François Fillon's second government.

Elected Mayor of Toulouse in 2001, he supported Jacques Chirac in the two rounds of the 2002 presidential election, in spite of the candidacy of François Bayrou.