85 Facts About Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac occupied various senior positions, including Minister of Agriculture and Minister of the Interior.

Jacques Chirac was known for his stand against the American-led invasion of Iraq, his recognition of the collaborationist French Government's role in deporting Jews, and his reduction of the presidential term from 7 years to 5 through a referendum in 2000.

Jacques Rene Chirac was born on 29 November 1932 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.

Jacques Chirac was the son of Abel Francois Marie Chirac, a successful executive for an aircraft company, and Marie-Louise Valette, a housewife.

Jacques Chirac was educated in Paris at the, a private school.

Jacques Chirac played rugby union for Brive's youth team, and played at university level.

At age 16, Jacques Chirac wanted to learn Sanskrit and found a White Russian Sanskrit teacher in Paris who ended up teaching him Russian; by age 17 Jacques Chirac was almost fluent in Russian.

Jacques Chirac trained as a reserve military officer in armoured cavalry at Saumur.

Jacques Chirac then volunteered to fight in the Algerian War, using personal connections to be sent despite the reservations of his superiors.

Jacques Chirac's superiors did not want to make him an officer because they suspected he had communist leanings.

At Pompidou's suggestion, Jacques Chirac ran as a Gaullist for a seat in the National Assembly in 1967.

Jacques Chirac was elected deputy for his home Correze, a stronghold of the left.

When student and worker unrest rocked France in May 1968, Jacques Chirac played a central role in negotiating a truce.

Jacques Chirac quickly earned a reputation as a champion of French farmers' interests, and first attracted international attention when he assailed US, West German, and European Commission agricultural policies which conflicted with French interests.

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

Jacques Chirac vainly attempted to rally Gaullists behind Prime Minister Pierre Messmer.

Jacques Chirac Chaban-Delmas announced his candidacy in spite of the disapproval of the "Pompidolians".

At the age of 41, Jacques Chirac stood out as the very model of the 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.

Jacques Chirac was advised by Pierre Juillet and Marie-France Garaud, two former advisers of Pompidou.

Jacques Chirac proceeded to build up his political base among France's several conservative parties, with a goal of reconstituting the Gaullist UDR into a Neo-Gaullist group, the Rally for the Republic.

Jacques Chirac's first tenure as prime minister was an arguably progressive one, with improvements in both the minimum wage and the social welfare system carried out during the course of his premiership.

Paradoxically, Jacques Chirac benefited from Giscard's decision to create the office of mayor in Paris, which had been in abeyance since the 1871 Commune, because the leaders of the Third Republic feared that having municipal control of the capital would give the mayor too much power.

In 1977, Jacques Chirac stood as a candidate against Michel d'Ornano, a close friend of the president, and he won.

In 1978, Jacques Chirac attacked the pro-European policy of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and made a nationalist turn with the December 1978 Call of Cochin, initiated by his counsellors Marie-France Garaud and Pierre Juillet, which had first been called by Pompidou.

Jacques Chirac appointed Yvan Blot, an intellectual who would later join the National Front, as director of his campaigns for the 1979 European election.

Jacques Chirac made his first run for president against Giscard d'Estaing in the 1981 election, thus splitting the centre-right vote.

Jacques Chirac refused to give instructions to the RPR voters but said that he supported the incumbent president "in a private capacity", which was interpreted as almost de facto support of the Socialist Party's candidate, Francois Mitterrand, who was elected by a broad majority.

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

Jacques Chirac told the Socialist candidate that he wanted to "get rid of Giscard".

Jacques Chirac passed himself off, as a right-wing voter, by changing his voice.

However, as Giscard had been knocked out, Jacques Chirac appeared as the principal leader of the right-wing opposition.

Furthermore, confronted by anti-colonialist movements in New Caledonia, Prime Minister Jacques Chirac ordered a military intervention against the separatists in the Ouvea cave, leading to the deaths of 19 militants.

Jacques Chirac allegedly refused any alliance with Jean-Marie Le Pen's.

Jacques Chirac ran against Mitterrand for a second time in the 1988 election.

Jacques Chirac obtained 20 per cent of the vote in the first round, but lost the second with only 46 per cent.

Jacques Chirac resigned from the cabinet and the right lost the next legislative election.

Jacques Chirac then declared that multipartism was a "kind of luxury".

Jacques Chirac announced that he did not want to come back as prime minister as his previous term had ended with his unsuccessful run for the presidency against Mitterrand who was still president at this point.

Jacques Chirac instead suggested the appointment of Edouard Balladur, who had promised that he would not run for the presidency against Jacques Chirac in 1995.

Jacques Chirac was elected on a platform of tax cuts and job programmes, but his policies did little to ease the labour strikes during his first months in office.

Jacques Chirac was the first president of France to take responsibility for the deportation of Jews during the Vichy regime.

In 1997, Jacques Chirac dissolved parliament for early legislative elections in a gamble designed to bolster support for his conservative economic program.

Jacques Chirac's position was weakened by scandals about the financing of RPR by Paris municipality.

Tiberi was finally expelled from the Rally for the Republic, Chirac's party, on 12 October 2000, declaring to the magazine on 18 November 2000: "Jacques Chirac is not my friend anymore".

Jacques Chirac reduced expenditure on nuclear weapons and the French nuclear arsenal was reduced to include 350 warheads, compared to the Russian nuclear arsenal of 16,000 warheads.

Jacques Chirac published a plan to reduce the number of fighters the French military had by 30.

The possibility of a further attempt foundered after Jacques Chirac was forced into cohabitation with a Socialist-led cabinet between 1997 and 2002, then poor Franco-American relations after the French UN veto threat over Iraq in 2003 made transatlantic negotiations impossible.

At the age of 69, Jacques Chirac faced his fourth presidential campaign in 2002.

Jacques Chirac won re-election by a landslide, with 82 per cent of the vote on the second ballot.

On 14 July 2002, during Bastille Day celebrations, Jacques Chirac survived an assassination attempt by a lone gunman with a rifle hidden in a guitar case.

On 19 January 2006, Jacques Chirac said that France was prepared to launch a nuclear strike against any country that sponsors a terrorist attack against French interests.

Jacques Chirac said his country's nuclear arsenal had been reconfigured to include the ability to make a tactical strike in retaliation for terrorism.

Jacques Chirac criticised the Israeli offensive into Lebanon on 14 July 2006.

However, Israeli Army Radio later reported that Jacques Chirac had secretly told Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert that France would support an Israeli invasion of Syria and the overthrow of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, promising to veto any moves against Israel in the United Nations or European Union.

Whereas the disagreement on Iraq had caused a rift between Paris and Washington, recent analysis suggests that both governments worked closely together on the Syria file to end the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and that Jacques Chirac was a driver of this diplomatic cooperation.

Jacques Chirac continued to be the voice within the G8 summit meetings to support international action to curb global warming and climate change concerns.

Jacques Chirac warned that "humanity is dancing on a volcano" and called for serious action by the world's leading industrialised nations.

Jacques Chirac espoused a staunchly pro-Moroccan policy, and the already established pro-Moroccan French stances vis-a-vis the Western Sahara conflict were strengthened during his presidential tenure.

Jacques Chirac requested the Landau-report and combined with the Report of the Technical Group on Innovative Financing Mechanisms formulated upon request by the Heads of State of Brazil, Chile, France and Spain, these documents present various opportunities for innovative financing mechanisms while equally stressing the advantages of tax-based models.

In early September 2005, Jacques Chirac suffered an event that his doctors described as a "vascular incident".

Jacques Chirac recovered and returned to his duties soon afterward.

Jacques Chirac did not explain the reasons for his decision.

Jacques Chirac did not, during the broadcast, endorse any of the candidates running for election, but did devote several minutes of his talk to a plea against extremist politics that was considered a thinly disguised invocation to voters not to vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen and a recommendation to Nicolas Sarkozy not to orient his campaign so as to include themes traditionally associated with Le Pen.

Jacques Chirac chaired the jury for the Prize for Conflict Prevention awarded every year by his foundation.

Jacques Chirac sat for the first time on the council on 15 November 2007, six months after leaving the presidency.

Immediately after Sarkozy's victory, Jacques Chirac moved into a 180-square-metre duplex on the in Paris lent to him by the family of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

In Volume 2 of his memoirs published in June 2011, Jacques Chirac mocked his successor Nicolas Sarkozy as "irritable, rash, impetuous, disloyal, ungrateful, and un-French".

Jacques Chirac wrote that he considered firing Sarkozy previously, and conceded responsibility in allowing Jean-Marie Le Pen to advance in 2002.

On 11 April 2008, Jacques Chirac's office announced that he had undergone successful surgery to fit a pacemaker.

Jacques Chirac suffered from frail health and memory loss in later life.

On 10 December 2015, Jacques Chirac was hospitalised in Paris for undisclosed reasons, although his state of health did not "give any cause for concern", he remained for about a week in ICU.

Jacques Chirac died at his home in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on 26 September 2019, surrounded by his family.

Jacques Chirac was a major supporter of the nation's film industry.

Jacques Chirac was a favourite character of, a satiric latex puppet show.

Jacques Chirac was given the Ig Nobel prize for peace, for commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic bomb tests in the Pacific.

At the invitation of Saddam Hussein, Jacques Chirac made an official visit to Baghdad in 1975.

The Osirak deal was then used by parts of the American media to criticise the Jacques Chirac-led opposition to starting a war in Iraq, despite French involvement in the Gulf War.

Jacques Chirac refused to testify on these matters, arguing that it would be incompatible with his presidential functions.

Jacques Chirac is said to be the first former French head of state to be formally placed under investigation for a crime.

On 30 October 2009, a judge ordered Jacques Chirac to stand trial on embezzlement charges, dating back to his time as mayor of Paris.

On 15 December 2011, Jacques Chirac was found guilty and given a suspended sentence of two years.

Jacques Chirac was convicted of diverting public funds, abuse of trust and illegal conflict of interest.

Jacques Chirac did not attend his trial, since medical doctors deemed that his neurological problems damaged his memory.

In 1956, Jacques Chirac married Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, with whom he had two daughters:.

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