Men Chirac

After studying at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration (ENA), he joined the cabinet of Georges Pompidou, then Prime Minister, as a chargé de mission in 1962.

Deputy of Corrèze in the right-wing majority and Secretary of State from 1967, he was appointed Prime Minister by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1974, notably following the call of the 43. Two years later, maintaining poor relations with the latter, he resigned from Matignon and launched the Rally for the Republic (RPR). He became mayor of Paris in 1977 and ran in the 1981 presidential election, where he participated in the failure of the outgoing president.

He was Prime Minister again from 1986 to 1988, under the presidency of François Mitterrand: he was thus the first head of government to cohabit under the Fifth Republic and, at the same time, the only political figure under the same regime to have twice held the office of Prime Minister. He was defeated in the second round of the 1988 presidential election against the incumbent president, and then took the lead in the opposition, although later competed by Édouard Balladur.

After the 1995 presidential election, he was elected head of state with 52.6% in the second round, facing the socialist Lionel Jospin. The beginning of his seven-year term was marked by a reform of pensions and social security which was massively contested and partly abandoned, and by the recognition of the French State's responsibility for the deportation of Jews during the Occupation. Following the failed dissolution of the National Assembly in 1997, he was forced to cohabit with Lionel Jospin. He must then face legal cases in which he is directly implicated.