28 Facts About Arnaud Montebourg

Arnaud Montebourg is a former member of the Socialist Party, which he left in 2018.

Arnaud Montebourg previously served as the member of the National Assembly for the 6th constituency of Saone-et-Loire from 1997 until 2012, and President of the General Council of Saone-et-Loire from 2008 to 2012.

Arnaud Montebourg's father, Michel Montebourg, who was a tax inspector for the Ministry of Economy and Finances, was born in 1933.

Arnaud Montebourg's mother, Leila Ould Cadi, who was born in 1939 in Algeria, was of Algerian and French descent; she was born into a family of walis from Hachem in Northern Algeria.

Arnaud Montebourg's Algerian great-grandfather, Ahmed Ould Cadi, who was an agha, fought against the Ottoman caliphate before joining the French Army.

Arnaud Montebourg was appointed Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour in 1867.

Arnaud Montebourg began working as an attorney with notable attorney Thierry Levy.

Didier did not want to be considered insane, so Arnaud Montebourg helped get the court to recognize him as responsible for the act.

Arnaud Montebourg was first elected to the National Assembly during the 1997 legislative election.

In 2001, Together with Bastien Francois, a professor of Political Science at Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Arnaud Montebourg became the cofounder of the Convention pour la VI-eme Republique.

Arnaud Montebourg was one of the founding members of the political movement known as the Nouveau Parti Socialiste, where he defended economical protectionism and sovereignty.

Arnaud Montebourg was one of the leading opponents of President Jacques Chirac's immunity from prosecution, especially concerning the corruption scandals in the Paris region.

Arnaud Montebourg, supported reporter Denis Robert for his role in revealing the illegal system of double-accounts maintained by Clearstream, a clearing-house based in Luxembourg, involving high-ranking politicians.

Arnaud Montebourg has been engaged in a campaign against the rules governing taxation of foreign nationals and the banking secrecy of Switzerland.

Arnaud Montebourg was appointed as spokesman for Segolene Royal's presidential campaign following his endorsement of her candidacy during the Socialist Party primary election in November 2006.

Arnaud Montebourg had offered his resignation, which Royal refused to accept.

In 2011, when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from prison and flown back to France, Arnaud Montebourg urged him to apologise for embarrassing the Socialist Party.

Arnaud Montebourg defended nuclear energy, considering it "an industry of the future" despite the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Arnaud Montebourg considered the General Electric takeover of Alstom a risk to French sovereignty.

Arnaud Montebourg notably introduced a decree, the decret Alstom, nicknamed decret Montebourg by the press, extending the French state's right to veto foreign takeovers of assets in the energy, water, transport, telecommunication, public health sectors.

Arnaud Montebourg was quoted as saying the decree protected France's strategic interests and represented the end of laissez-faire economic policy.

On 11 February 2014, Arnaud Montebourg was among the guests invited to the state dinner hosted by US President Barack Obama in honor of Hollande at the White House.

In October 2014, Arnaud Montebourg enrolled in the INSEAD graduate business school for a four-week course and sought a bursary for his studies.

On 4 September 2021, after having taken a step back from politics in 2017, Arnaud Montebourg announced his candidacy in the 2022 presidential election from his home town of Clamecy, without going through a party primary election.

Arnaud Montebourg's supporters included the Citizen and Republican Movement, founded by Jean-Pierre Chevenement, the former Socialist minister Laurence Rossignol, Socialist senators Mickael Vallet and Jean-Claude Tissot, demographer Emmanuel Todd, economist Gael Giraud, politologist Thomas Guenole and economist and entrepreneur Valentin Przyluski.

Arnaud Montebourg withdrew from the race on 20 January 2022, after failing to gain momentum.

Arnaud Montebourg lived from 2010 to 2012 with journalist Audrey Pulvar and from 2014 until 2017 with fellow minister Aurelie Filippetti, with whom he has a daughter, Jeanne, born in September 2015.

In February 2015, Arnaud Montebourg was called a hero for saving several fellow diners in the New York City brasserie Balthazar from serious injury by single-handedly holding up a large mirror which had fallen from the restaurant's ceiling.