1. Rachida Dati was a spokesperson for Sarkozy during his 2007 presidential campaign.
26 Facts About Rachida Dati
1. 2.
Rachida Dati was elected to the mayorship of the 7th arrondissement of Paris in 2008, when she entered the Council of Paris.
3.
Rachida Dati was born on 27 November 1965 in Saint-Remy, Burgundy, to a Moroccan father, a bricklayer named M'Barek Dati, and an Algerian mother, named Fatima-Zohra.
4.
Rachida Dati was the second child of eleven in an impoverished family.
5.
Rachida Dati studied at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, where she received a master's degree in Economics, as well as at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris, where she later received a law degree.
6.
At the age of sixteen, Rachida Dati started working as a maid and as a paramedical assistant.
7.
Rachida Dati then worked for three years as an accountant at Elf Aquitaine while at university.
8.
Rachida Dati tried to study medicine, but failed twice in her first year.
9.
Rachida Dati later spent a year in London at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, in the records management and archiving department.
10.
In 1997, following the advice of Simone Veil and Albin Chalandon, Rachida Dati joined and was admitted to the Ecole nationale de la magistrature, a public educational institution which offers courses necessary to become a magistrate.
11.
Rachida Dati went on to become judge for collective procedures at the in Peronne and eventually an assistant to the attorney general of the Evry tribunal.
12.
In 2002, Rachida Dati became Nicolas Sarkozy's advisor, working for him on an anti-delinquency project.
13.
On 23 January 2009, Sarkozy announced that Rachida Dati would take the second position on the UMP candidate list for the Ile-de-France constituency in the European Parliament election in June 2009, to which she was elected.
14.
Rachida Dati left her post as minister after being elected as a Member of the European Parliament.
15.
Rachida Dati founded a consulting company called "La Bourdonnais consultant," which she had to dissolve at the beginning of 2010 to be able to resume the profession of lawyer, which she had to do by special dispensation.
16.
Rachida Dati sits on the editorial board of the French version of the Huffington Post, where she writes a weekly column about women's issues.
17.
In parliament, Rachida Dati was the Parliament's rapporteur on several texts dealing with countering terrorism and the prevention of radicalisation and recruitment of European citizens by terrorist organisations.
18.
On 9 February 2013, Rachida Dati announced she was a candidate for mayor of Paris in the 2014 local elections but she later withdrew because "the press has already chosen Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet".
19.
In early 2019, Rachida Dati announced her plan to run again for the Paris municipal election in 2020.
20.
On 11 January 2024, Rachida Dati made a surprise comeback to national politics, being nominated as Minister of Culture in the government of Gabriel Attal.
21.
Rachida Dati retained her position on 21 September 2024 in the government of Michel Barnier, and again on 23 December in the government of Francois Bayrou.
22.
In early 2009, Rachida Dati received an anonymous death threat accompanied by a 9 mm bullet.
23.
In December 2013, French media reported that Rachida Dati had received payments from French energy utility GDF-Suez.
24.
The claim was made that the rejection was due to bribery of EU parliamentarians; Rachida Dati stood out as one of the leading voices to reject the report about the state of democracy in Azerbaijan.
25.
In September 2008, Rachida Dati announced that she was pregnant and would be a single mother.
26.
Rachida Dati revealed her pregnancy to a group of reporters who questioned her about mounting rumours.