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Millennium Dome

The Millennium Dome was the original name of the large dome-shaped building on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East London, England, which housed a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium. As of 2022, it is the ninth largest building in the world by usable volume. The exhibition was open to the public from 1 January to 31 December 2000. The project and exhibition were highly contentious and attracted barely half of the 12 million customers its sponsors forecasted, and so were deemed a failure by the press. All the original exhibition elements were sold or dismantled.

In a 2005 report, the cost of the Dome and surrounding land (which increased to 170 acres from the initial offering of the 48 acres enclosed by the Dome) and managing the Dome until the deal was closed was £28.7 million. The value of the 48 acres occupied by the Dome was estimated at £48 million, which could have been realised by demolishing the structure, but it was considered preferable to preserve the Dome. The structure itself still exists and is now a key exterior feature of The O2.

The Prime Meridian passes the western edge of the Dome and the nearest London Underground station is North Greenwich on the Jubilee line.

Architecture

The dome is one of the largest of its type in the world. Externally, it appears as a large white marquee with twelve 100 metre yellow support towers, one for each month of the year, or each hour of the clock face, representing the role played by Greenwich Mean Time. In plan view it is circular, 365 m (1 m for each day in a standard year) in diameter. It has become one of the United Kingdom's most recognisable landmarks, and can be easily identified on satellite images of London.

The architect was Richard Rogers and the contractor was a joint venture company, McAlpine/Laing Joint Venture (MLJV) formed between Sir Robert McAlpine and Laing Management. The building structure was engineered by Buro Happold, and the entire roof structure weighs less than the air contained within the building. Although referred to as a dome it is "not a dome in the structural sense [...] In this building, a dome-shaped cable network is supported on a ring of [...] masts". It has been disparagingly referred to as the Millennium Tent.

The canopy is 52 m high in the middle – 1 m for each week of the year and is made of durable and weather-resistant PTFE-coated glass fibre fabric panels (original plans to use PVC-coated polyester fabric were dropped after protest led by Greenpeace ), with each of the 72 segments containing two panels. Its symmetry is interrupted by a hole through which a ventilation shaft from the Blackwall Tunnel rises. Six segments were destroyed during Storm Eunice on 18 February 2022.

Built in 15 months, the dome structure was delivered under budget, at a cost of £43m.

The critic Jonathan Meades has scathingly referred to the Millennium Dome as a "Museum of Toxic Waste", and apart from the dome itself, the project included the reclamation of the entire Greenwich Peninsula. The land was previously derelict and contaminated by toxic sludge from East Greenwich Gas Works that operated from 1889 to 1985. The clean-up operation was seen by the then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine as an investment that would add a large area of useful land to the crowded capital.

Background to the Dome project
The Dome project was conceived, originally on a somewhat smaller scale, under John Major's Conservative government, as a Festival of Britain or World's Fair-type showcase to celebrate the third millennium. The incoming Labour government elected in 1997 under Tony Blair greatly expanded the size, scope and funding of the project, and construction began in June 1997. It also significantly increased expectations of what would be delivered. Just before its opening Blair claimed the Dome would be "a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity". In the words of BBC correspondent Robert Orchard, "the Dome was to be highlighted as a glittering New Labour achievement in the next election manifesto", but criticised in the 2001 Conservative Party manifesto as  "banal, anonymous and rootless", and lacking "a sense of Britain's history or culture". Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a member of the Dome's board suggested the project be refashioned and extended "to accommodate, for example, a hospital, businesses, charities, private residences, and the whole thing named 'the Princess Diana Centre. The idea was later scrapped.

Before its opening, the Dome was excoriated in Iain Sinclair's diatribe, Sorry Meniscus – Excursions to the Millennium Dome (Profile Books: London 1999, ISBN 1-86197-179-6), which forecast the hype, the associated political posturing, and the eventual disillusion. The post-exhibition plan had been to convert the Dome into a European football stadium which would last for 25 years: Charlton Athletic at one point considered a possible move but instead chose to redevelop their own stadium. Local team Fisher Athletic were at one time interested in moving to the Dome, but they were considered to have too small a fan base to make this feasible. The Dome was planned to take over the functions performed by the London Arena after its closure. This is the function which The O2 Arena has now undertaken.

Millennium Experience

After a private opening on the evening of 31 December 1999, including a New Year's Eve celebration attended by Queen Elizabeth II, the Millennium Experience at the Dome was open to the public for the whole of 2000, and contained a large number of attractions and exhibits.

Millennium Dome Show
The English musician Peter Gabriel issued in 2000 The Story of OVO which was released in a CD-booklet-shaped comic book as part of the CD edition with the title "OVO The Millennium Show". The story of the 2000 Millennium Dome Show based on it. The show opened on 1 January 2000 and was performed 999 times before closing on 31 December of that year. sponsored by Walt Disney World.

The exhibits
The interior space was subdivided into 14 zones: "Who We Are" (Body, Faith, Mind and Self-Portrait), "What We Do" (Work, Learning, Rest, Play, Talk, Money and Journey) and "Where We Live" (Shared Ground, Living Island and Home Planet).

Surrounded by the zones was a performance area in the centre of the dome. With music composed by Peter Gabriel and an acrobatic cast of 160, the Millennium Dome Show was performed 999 times over the course of the year. Throughout the year, the specially-commissioned film Blackadder: Back & Forth was shown in Skyscape (a separate cinema on the site sponsored by BSkyB). There was also the McDonald's Our Town Story project in which each Local Education Authority in the UK was invited to perform a show of their devising which characterised their area and its people.

As well as the above, the first ever series of Techno Games was filmed there and shown on BBC Two the same year.

Other attractions
There were a number of other attractions both in and outside of The Dome. Inside the Dome there was a play area named Timekeepers of the Millennium (featuring the characters Coggsley and Sprinx), The Millennium Coin Minting Press in association with the Royal Mint, the 1951 Festival of Britain Bus, and the Millennium Star Jewels (focus of the failed Millennium Diamond heist. ) Outside was the Millennium Map (thirteen metres; 43' high), the Childhood Cube, Looking Around (a hidden installation), Greenwich Pavilion, the Hanging Gardens at the front of the Dome, as well as a number of other art installations and sculptures.

Two of the remaining art installations form the start of The Line, a modern art trail connecting the O2 to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Financial and management problems
The project was largely reported by the press to have been a failure. During 2000, the organisers repeatedly asked for, and received, more cash from the Millennium Commission, the Lottery body which supported it. Numerous changes at management and Board level, before and during the exhibition, had only limited, if any, results. Jennifer Page was sacked as chief executive of the New Millennium Experience Company just one month after the dome's opening. Press reports suggested that the Prime Minister Tony Blair placed a high priority on making the Dome a success. Part of the problem was that the financial predictions were based on an unrealistically high forecast of visitor numbers at 12 million. During the first year that it was open there were approximately 6.5 million visitors – significantly fewer than the approximately 10 million paying visitors that attended the Festival of Britain, which only ran from May to September. Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938, held in Glasgow, attracted more than 12 million visitors, being open May to October. Unlike the press, visitor feedback was extremely positive. It was the most popular tourist attraction in 2000. Second was the London Eye; third was Alton Towers, which had been first in 1999.

According to the UK National Audit Office, the cost of The Dome at the liquidation of the New Millennium Experience Company in 2002 was £789 million, of which £628 million was covered by National Lottery grants and £189 million through sales of tickets etc. A surplus of £25 million over costs meant that the full lottery grant was not required. The £603 million of lottery money was still £204 million in excess of the original estimate of £399 million required, due to the shortfall in visitor numbers.

Closure and sale of site
The government's difficulties in selling the site became the subject of much critical comment. The amount spent on maintaining the closed building was also criticised. Shortly after it had closed, Lord Falconer reported that The Dome was costing over £1 million per month to maintain.

Following closure of the Dome, some Zones were dismantled by the sponsoring organisations, but much of the content was auctioned or donated to Disney World. This included a number of artworks specially commissioned from contemporary British artists. A piece by Gavin Turk was sold for far below his auction price, though Turk stated that he did not think the piece had worked. The Timekeepers of the Millennium attraction was acquired by the Chessington World of Adventures theme park in Surrey. A unique record of the memorabilia and paraphernalia of the Millennium Experience is held by a private collector in the United States. Many of the fixtures and fittings were also purchased by Paul Scally, chairman of Gillingham F.C., for the club's stadium.

Temporary reopenings
The Dome opened again during December 2003 for the Winter Wonderland 2003 experience. The event, which featured a large funfair, ice rink, and other attractions, culminated in a laser and firework display on New Year's Eve. It also served as the venue for a number of free music festivals organised by the Mayor of London under the "Respect" banner.

Over the 2004 Christmas period, part of the main dome was used as a shelter for the homeless and others in need, organised by the charity Crisis after superseding the London Arena, which had previously hosted the event. In 2005, when work began for the redevelopment of the Dome, the London Arena hosted the event again.

Redevelopment and rebranding as The O2
By late 2000, a proposal had been made for a high-tech business park to be erected under the tent area, creating an "indoor city" complete with streets, parks, and buildings. The business park was actually the original 1996 proposal for the site of the peninsula before the plans for the Millennium Dome were proposed.

A suggestion was also made that the entire Dome be relocated to Swindon to serve as a research centre and extension of the Science Museum; this proposal only came to light when released by The National Archives in 2022.

In December 2001, it was announced that Meridian Delta Ltd had been chosen by the government to develop the Dome as a sports and entertainment centre, and to develop housing, shops and offices on 150 acre of surrounding land. It also hoped to relocate some of London's tertiary education establishments to the site. Meridian Delta is backed by the American billionaire Philip Anschutz, who has interests in oil, railways, and telecommunications, as well as a string of sports-related investments.

A report in 2005 by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found that the cost of the process of selling the Dome and surrounding land (which increased to 170 acres from the initial offering of the 48 acres enclosed by the Dome) and managing the Dome until the deal was closed was £28.7 million. £33 million were expected to be returned to the taxpayer by 2009. The value of the 48 acres occupied by the Dome was estimated at £48 million, which could have been realised by demolishing the structure, but it was considered preferable to preserve the Dome.

The dome was publicly renamed as The O2 on 31 May 2005, in a £6 million-per-year deal with telecommunications company O2 plc, now a subsidiary of Telefónica Europe. This announcement, which presaged a major redevelopment of the site that retained little beyond the shell of the dome, gave publicity to the dome's transition into an entertainment district including an indoor arena, a music club, a cinema, an exhibition space and bars and restaurants. This redevelopment was undertaken by the dome's new owners, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, to a design by HOK SVE and Buro Happold. It cost £600 million, and the resulting venue opened to the public on 24 June 2007, with a concert by rock band Bon Jovi.

During the 2012 Summer Olympics, the artistic gymnastics events, along with the medal rounds of basketball, were held at The O2. It also held wheelchair basketball events during the 2012 Summer Paralympics. For sponsorship reasons, during those times the arena was temporarily renamed the North Greenwich Arena.

The O2 now contains multiple VR theme park rides, a trampoline park, and an attraction called "Up at The O2," offering guided climbs on the O2 arena.

Effects on political careers
Issues related to the Dome damaged the political careers of government ministers Peter Mandelson and John Prescott. The scheme was seen as an early example of what some saw as Tony Blair's often excessive optimism, who stated at the Dome's opening: "In the Dome we have a creation that, I believe, will truly be a beacon to the world". The fact that Mandelson's grandfather was Herbert Morrison—who as a minister had been involved with the Festival of Britain—was often drawn on for negative comparisons.

Chronology of the project

 * 1994: Millennium Commission established by Prime Minister John Major and handed over to Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine.
 * 1 March 1995: chief executive Jennie Page appointed.
 * 19 June 1996: Greenwich Peninsula site selected over Birmingham by the Millennium Commission. The Birmingham NEC, Pride Park in Derby and Bromley-by-Bow in East London were the other locations on the final short list.
 * December 1996: Government decides to support the project with public money after being unable to raise private capital.
 * 19 June 1997: New Prime Minister Tony Blair visits Greenwich to announce that the Millennium Dome has been saved. The decision was taken only after a difficult Cabinet debate which lasted for more than an hour.
 * 20 June 1997: Tony Blair appointed Peter Mandelson to the role of Minister for the Millennium after his announcement that the beleaguered £580 million dome would go ahead.
 * June 1997: Construction begins.
 * 10 January 1998: Creative director Stephen Bayley quits the project. He is said to have been at "loggerheads" with Peter Mandelson as to who was in charge with the project.
 * 23 December 1998: Peter Mandelson resigns from government after a financial scandal.
 * 4 January 1999: Lord Falconer of Thoroton replaces Mandelson.
 * May 1999: The Jubilee Line Extension opens, putting the Dome on the London Underground. This too is seen as disorderly, opening 14 months late and with station facilities not yet complete (e.g. lifts for wheelchair access).
 * 22 June 1999: structure of Dome completed.
 * 31 December 1999: the BBC Balloon is seen flying during "2000 Today" on BBC One, and used throughout 2000.
 * 31 December 1999 and 1 January 2000: VIP guests are kept waiting outside for hours because of a ticketing problem.
 * 1 January 2000: Dome structure opens to public as the Millennium Dome containing an exhibition to celebrate the third millennium.
 * 5 February 2000: Chief executive Jennie Page sacked and replaced by Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.
 * 26 July 2000: Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee publishes adverse report on Dome's management.
 * 7 November 2000: Thieves break into the diamond exhibit during opening hours but are foiled by waiting police. Four men are jailed for the attempted robbery on 18 February 2002.
 * 9 November 2000: National Audit Office publishes report blaming unrealistic attendance targets for the Dome's financial problems.
 * 14 November 2000: Michael Heseltine (MP for Henley), the Dome's original political supporter, states "I have seen the inside story, and of course, with hindsight, all of us would do it differently".
 * 31 December 2000: Dome closed to the public, having attracted just over six million visitors. The initial projected figure was twelve million.
 * 27 February 2001 – 2 March 2001: One Amazing Auction Sale: Four-day public auction with 17,000 lots of Dome/NMEC items, managed by auctioneer Henry Butcher.
 * 18 December 2001: Announcement of sale of site to Meridian Delta Ltd, who planned to turn it into a 20,000-seat sports and entertainment venue. Houses and offices to be built on the surrounding land, subject to the consent of the London Borough of Greenwich.
 * 6 December 2003: opening of Winter Wonderland.
 * 25 May 2005: Anschutz Entertainment Group sells the naming rights to the former Millennium Dome to O2 plc, a British mobile phone company.
 * 24 June 2007: The O2 opens, with a concert by Bon Jovi.

In popular culture

 * Within the foundations of the Dome in 1998, a time capsule was buried by Katy Hill and Richard Bacon, two of the then-current presenters of the long running BBC children's programme Blue Peter. The capsule was due to be opened in 2050, but was accidentally unearthed and damaged in 2017 during construction work. It was originally intended to be reburied once it had been repaired, but was instead opened and its contents taken on a tour of the UK. It was subsequently stored in the National Archives until 2050 alongside a new Diamond Time Capsule celebrating the show's 60th anniversary.
 * The song "Silvertown Blues" from Mark Knopfler's 2000 album Sailing to Philadelphia deals with the construction of The Dome.
 * Two books about the attempted robbery of the De Beers diamonds from the Dome were published in 2004: Diamond Geezers – The Inside Story of the Crime of the Millennium (ISBN 1843171228) written by Kris Hollington, published by Michael O'Mara Books Ltd, and Dome Raiders – How Scotland Yard Foiled the Greatest Robbery of All Time (ISBN 1852271949) written by Jon Shatford and William Doyle, published by Virgin Books.
 * In 2005, the Dome was featured in a task on The Amazing Race 7, in which contestants had to drive an AEC Routemaster double-decker bus through the structure's car park.
 * Gideon's Daughter is a 2006 BBC television drama written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff, stars Bill Nighy as a publicist working to promote the Dome in the run-up to its grand opening. Emily Blunt plays the titular daughter who is disdainful of the project, while Miranda Richardson plays Gideon's love interest whose simple observations about his life – and the Dome – reshape Gideon's life. Both Nighy and Blunt received Golden Globe Awards for their performances. The show won a Peabody Award in April 2007.
 * The Millennium Dome was prominently featured in the pre-title sequence of the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. Bond falls down the outside of the Dome when pursuing a target, injuring his shoulder in the process.

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Jacques Chirac

Jacques René Chirac (, ; 29 November 1932 –26 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.

After attending the École nationale d'administration, Chirac began his career as a high-level civil servant, entering politics shortly thereafter. Chirac occupied various senior positions, including minister of agriculture and minister of the interior. In 1981 and 1988, he unsuccessfully ran for president as the standard-bearer for the conservative Gaullist party Rally for the Republic (RPR). Chirac's internal policies initially included lower tax rates, the removal of price controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism, and business privatisation.

After pursuing these policies in his second term as prime minister, Chirac changed his views. He argued for different economic policies and was elected president in 1995, with 52.6% of the vote in the second round, beating Socialist Lionel Jospin, after campaigning on a platform of healing the "social rift" (fracture sociale). Chirac's economic policies, based on dirigisme, allowing for state-directed investment, stood in opposition to the laissez-faire policies of the United Kingdom under the ministries of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, which Chirac described as "Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism".

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 seven years to five through a referendum in 2000. At the 2002 presidential election, he won 82.2% of the vote in the second round against the far-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and was the last president to be re-elected until 2022. In 2011, the Paris court declared Chirac guilty of diverting public funds and abusing public confidence, giving him a two-year suspended prison sentence.

Family background
Jacques René Chirac was born on 29 November 1932 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. He was the son of Abel François Marie Chirac (1898–1968), a successful executive for an aircraft company, and Marie-Louise Valette (1902–1973), a housewife. His grandparents were all teachers from Sainte-Féréole in Corrèze. His great-grandparents on both sides were peasants in the rural south-western region of the Corrèze.

According to Chirac, his name "originates from the langue d'oc, that of the troubadours, therefore that of poetry". He was a Catholic.

Chirac was an only child (his elder sister, Jacqueline, died in infancy nearly ten years before his birth). He was educated in Paris at the Cours Hattemer, a private school. He then attended the Lycée Carnot and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. After his baccalauréat, behind his father's back he went off to serve for three months as a sailor on a coal-transport.

Chirac played rugby union for Brive's youth team, and also played at university level. He played no. 8 and second row. At age 18, his ambition was to become a ship's captain.

Education and early career
At age 16, Chirac wanted to learn Sanskrit and found a White Russian Sanskrit teacher in Paris who ended up teaching him Russian; by age 17 Chirac was almost fluent in Russian. Inspired by Charles de Gaulle, Chirac started to pursue a civil service career in the 1950s. During this period, he joined the French Communist Party, sold copies of L'Humanité, and took part in meetings of a communist cell. In 1950, he signed the Soviet-inspired Stockholm Appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons – which led him to be questioned when he applied for his first visa to the United States.

In 1953, after graduating from the Sciences Po, he attended a non-credit course at Harvard University's summer school, before entering the École nationale d'administration, which trains France's top civil servants, in 1957.

In the United States, Chirac worked at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri.

Chirac trained as a reserve military officer in armoured cavalry at Saumur. He then volunteered to fight in the Algerian War, using personal connections to be sent despite the reservations of his superiors. His superiors did not want to make him an officer because they suspected he had communist leanings. In 1965, he became an auditor in the Court of Auditors.

The "Bulldozer": 1962–1971
In April 1962, Chirac was appointed head of the personal staff of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. This appointment launched Chirac's political career. Pompidou considered Chirac his protégé, and referred to him as "my bulldozer" for his skill at getting things done. The nickname Le Bulldozer caught on in French political circles, where it also referred to his abrasive manner. As late as the 1988 presidential election, Chirac maintained this reputation.

At Pompidou's suggestion, Chirac ran as a Gaullist for a seat in the National Assembly in 1967. He was elected deputy for his home Corrèze département, a stronghold of the left. This surprising victory in the context of a Gaullist ebb permitted him to enter the government as Minister of Social Affairs. 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". When student and worker unrest rocked France in May 1968, Chirac played a central role in negotiating a truce. Then, as state secretary of economy (1968–1971), he worked closely with Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who headed the ministry of economy and finance.

Cabinet minister: 1971–1974
After some months in the ministry for Relations with Parliament, Chirac's first high-level post came in 1972 when he became Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development under Pompidou, who had been elected president in 1969, after de Gaulle retired. Chirac quickly earned a reputation as a champion of French farmers' interests, and first attracted international attention when he assailed U.S., West German, and European Commission agricultural policies which conflicted with French interests.

On 27 February 1974, after the resignation of Raymond Marcellin, Chirac was appointed Minister of the Interior. On 21 March 1974, he cancelled the SAFARI project due to privacy concerns after its existence was revealed by Le Monde. From March 1974, he was entrusted by President Pompidou with preparations for the presidential election then scheduled for 1976. These elections were moved forward because of Pompidou's sudden death on 2 April 1974.

Chirac vainly attempted to rally Gaullists behind Prime Minister Pierre Messmer. Jacques Chaban-Delmas announced his candidacy in spite of the disapproval of the "Pompidolians". Chirac and others published the call of the 43 in favour of Giscard d'Estaing, the leader of the non-Gaullist part of the parliamentary majority. Giscard d'Estaing was elected as Pompidou's successor after France's most competitive election campaign in years. In return, the new president chose Chirac to lead the cabinet.

Prime Minister of Giscard: 1974–1976
When Valéry Giscard d'Estaing became president, he nominated Chirac as prime minister on 27 May 1974, to reconcile the "Giscardian" and "non-Giscardian" factions of the parliamentary majority. 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. In December 1974, he took the lead of the Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR) against the will of its more senior personalities.

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. Chirac was advised by Pierre Juillet and Marie-France Garaud, two former advisers of Pompidou. These two organised the campaign against Chaban-Delmas in 1974. They advocated a clash with Giscard d'Estaing because they thought his policy bewildered the conservative electorate.

Citing Giscard's unwillingness to give him authority, Chirac resigned as prime minister in 1976. He 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 (RPR). Chirac's first tenure as prime minister was also an arguably progressive one, with improvements in both the minimum wage and the social welfare system carried out during the course of his premiership.

Mayor of Paris: 1977–1995
After his departure from the cabinet, Chirac wanted to gain the leadership of the political right, to gain the French presidency in the future. The RPR was conceived as an electoral machine against President Giscard d'Estaing. Paradoxically, 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 (1871–1940) feared that having municipal control of the capital would give the mayor too much power. In 1977, Chirac stood as a candidate against Michel d'Ornano, a close friend of the president, and won. As mayor of Paris, Chirac's political influence grew. He held this post until 1995.

Chirac supporters point out that, as mayor, he provided programmes to help the elderly, people with disabilities, and single mothers, and introduced the street-cleaning Motocrotte, while providing incentives for businesses to stay in Paris. His opponents contend that he installed "clientelist" policies.

Struggle for the right-wing leadership: 1976–1986
In 1978, Chirac attacked Giscard's pro-European policy 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. Hospitalised in Hôpital Cochin after a car crash, he declared that "as always about the drooping of France, the pro-foreign party acts with its peaceable and reassuring voice". He appointed Yvan Blot, an intellectual who would later join the National Front, as director of his campaigns for the 1979 European election.

After the poor results of the election, Chirac broke with Garaud and Juillet. Vexed Marie-France Garaud stated: "We thought Chirac was made of the same marble of which statues are carved in, we perceive he's of the same faience bidets are made of." His rivalry with Giscard d'Estaing intensified.

Chirac made his first run for president against Giscard d'Estaing in the 1981 election, thus splitting the centre-right vote. He was eliminated in the first round with 18% of the vote. He reluctantly supported Giscard in the second round. He 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 (PS) candidate, François Mitterrand, who was elected by a broad majority.

Giscard has always blamed Chirac for his defeat. He was told by Mitterrand, before his death, that the latter had dined with Chirac before the election. Chirac told the Socialist candidate that he wanted to "get rid of Giscard". In his memoirs, Giscard wrote that between the two rounds, he phoned the RPR headquarters. He passed himself off, as a right-wing voter, by changing his voice. The RPR employee advised him "certainly do not vote Giscard!" After 1981, the relationship between the two men became tense, with Giscard, even though he had been in the same government coalition as Chirac, criticising Chirac's actions openly.

After the May 1981 presidential election, the right also lost the subsequent legislative election that year. However, as Giscard had been knocked out, Chirac appeared as the principal leader of the right-wing opposition. Due to his attacks against the economic policy of the Socialist government, he gradually aligned himself with prevailing economically liberal opinion, even though it did not correspond with Gaullist doctrine. While the far-right National Front grew, taking advantage of the proportional representation electoral system which had been introduced for the 1986 legislative elections, he signed an electoral pact with the Giscardian (and more or less Christian Democratic) party Union for French Democracy (UDF).

Prime Minister of Mitterrand: 1986–1988

When the RPR/UDF right-wing coalition won a slight majority in the National Assembly in the 1986 election, Mitterrand (PS) appointed Chirac prime minister (though many in Mitterrand's inner circle lobbied him to choose Jacques Chaban-Delmas instead). This unprecedented power-sharing arrangement, known as cohabitation, gave Chirac the lead in domestic affairs. However, it is generally conceded that Mitterrand used the areas granted to the President of the Republic, or "reserved domains" of the Presidency, Defence and Foreign Affairs, to belittle his prime minister.

Chirac's cabinet sold many public companies, renewing the liberalisation initiated under Laurent Fabius's Socialist government of 1984–1986, and abolished the solidarity tax on wealth (ISF), a symbolic tax on those with high value assets introduced by Mitterrand's government. Elsewhere, the plan for university reform (plan Devaquet) caused a crisis in 1986 when a student called Malik Oussekine was killed by the police, leading to massive demonstrations and the proposal's withdrawal. It has been said during other student crises that this event strongly affected Jacques Chirac, who was afterwards careful about possible police violence during such demonstrations (e.g., maybe explaining part of the decision to "promulgate without applying" the First Employment Contract (CPE) after large student demonstrations against it).

One of his first acts concerning foreign policy was to call back Jacques Foccart (1913–1997), who had been de Gaulle's and his successors' leading counsellor for African matters, called by journalist Stephen Smith the "father of all "networks" on the continent, at the time [in 1986] aged 72." Foccart, who had also co-founded the Gaullist SAC militia (dissolved by Mitterrand in 1982 after the Auriol massacre) 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. 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 the deaths of 19 militants. He allegedly refused any alliance with Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.

Crossing the desert: 1988–1995
Chirac ran against Mitterrand for a second time in the 1988 election. He obtained 20 per cent of the vote in the first round, but lost the second with only 46 per cent. He resigned from the cabinet and the right lost the next legislative election.

For the first time, his leadership over the RPR was challenged. Charles Pasqua and Philippe Séguin criticised his abandonment of Gaullist doctrines. On the right, a new generation of politicians, the "renovation men", accused Chirac and Giscard of being responsible for the electoral defeats. In 1992, convinced a candidate could not become president whilst advocating anti-European policies, he called for a "yes" vote in the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, against the opinion of Pasqua, Séguin and a majority of the RPR voters, who chose to vote "no".

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

Nevertheless, the right won the 1993 legislative election. 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.

Chirac instead suggested the appointment of Edouard Balladur, who had promised that he would not run for the presidency against Chirac in 1995. However, benefiting from positive polls, Balladur decided to be a presidential candidate, with the support of a majority of right-wing politicians. Balladur broke from Chirac along with a number of friends and allies, including Charles Pasqua, Nicolas Sarkozy, etc., who supported his candidacy. A small group of fidels would remain with Chirac, including Alain Juppé and Jean-Louis Debré. When Nicolas Sarkozy became president in 2007, Juppé was one of the few chiraquiens to serve in François Fillon's government.

Juppé ministry

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 centre and thus forcing Balladur to radicalise himself. Ultimately, he obtained more votes than Balladur in the first round (20.8 per cent), and then defeated the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the second round (52.6 per cent).

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. 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. At about the same time, it became apparent that Juppé and others had obtained preferential conditions for public housing, as well as other perks. At the year's end Chirac faced major workers' strikes which turned, in November–December 1995, into a general strike, one of the largest since May 1968. The demonstrations were largely pitted against Juppé's plan for pension reform, and ultimately led to his dismissal.

Shortly after taking office, Chirac – undaunted by international protests by environmental groups – insisted upon the resumption of nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia in 1995, a few months before signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Reacting to criticism, Chirac said, "You only have to look back at 1935...There were people then who were against France arming itself, and look what happened." On 1 February 1996, Chirac announced that France had ended "once and for all" its nuclear testing and intended to accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Elected as President of the Republic, he refused to discuss the existence of French military bases in Africa, despite requests by the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The French Army thus remained in Côte d'Ivoire as well as in Omar Bongo's Gabon.

State responsibility for the roundup of Jews
Prior to 1995, the French government had maintained that the French Republic had been dismantled when Philippe Pétain instituted a new French State during World War II and that the Republic had been re-established when the war was over. It was not for France, therefore, to apologise for the roundup of Jews for deportation that happened while the Republic had not existed and was carried out by a state, Vichy France, which it did not recognise. President François Mitterrand had reiterated this position: "The Republic had nothing to do with this. I do not believe France is responsible," he said in September 1994.

Chirac was the first president of France to take responsibility for the deportation of Jews during the Vichy regime. In a speech made on 16 July 1995 at the site of the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, where 13,000 Jews had been held for deportation to concentration camps in July 1942, Chirac said, "France, on that day, committed the irreparable". Those responsible for the roundup were "4,500 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders [who] obeyed the demands of the Nazis. ... the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French State".

"Cohabitation" with Jospin
In 1997, Chirac dissolved parliament for early legislative elections in a gamble designed to bolster support for his conservative economic program. But instead, it created an uproar, and his power was weakened by the subsequent backlash. 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.

Cohabitation significantly weakened the power of Chirac's presidency. The French president, by a constitutional convention, only controls foreign and military policy— and even then, allocation of funding is under the control of Parliament and under the significant influence of the prime minister. Short of dissolving parliament and calling for new elections, the president was left with little power to influence public policy regarding crime, the economy, and public services. Chirac seized the occasion to periodically criticise Jospin's government.

His position was weakened by scandals about the financing of RPR by Paris municipality. In 2001, the left, represented by Bertrand Delanoë (PS), won a majority on the city council of the capital. Jean Tiberi, Chirac's successor at the Paris city hall, was forced to resign after having been put under investigations in June 1999 on charges of trafic d'influences in the HLMs of Paris affairs (related to the illegal financing of the RPR). Tiberi was finally expelled from the Rally for the Republic, Chirac's party, on 12 October 2000, declaring to the magazine Le Figaro on 18 November 2000: "Jacques Chirac is not my friend anymore".

After the publication of the Jean-Claude Méry by Le Monde on 22 September 2000, in which Jean-Claude Méry, in charge of the RPR's financing, directly accused Chirac of organising the network, and of having been physically present on 5 October 1986, when Méry gave in cash 5 million Francs, which came from companies who had benefited from state deals, to Michel Roussin, personal secretary (directeur de cabinet of Chirac, Chirac refused to attend court in response to his summons by judge Eric Halphen, and the highest echelons of the French justice system declared that he could not be inculpated while in office.

During his two terms, he increased the Elysee Palace's total budget by 105 per cent (to €90 million, whereas 20 years before it was the equivalent of €43.7 million). He doubled the number of presidential cars – to 61 cars and seven scooters in the Palace's garage. He hired 145 extra employees – the total number of the people he employed simultaneously was 963.

Defence policy
As the Supreme Commander of the French armed forces, he reduced the military budget, as did his predecessor. At the end of his first term it accounted for three per cent of GDP. In 1997 the aircraft carrier Clemenceau was decommissioned after 37 years of service, with her sister ship Foch decommissioned in 2000 after 37 years of service, leaving the French Navy with no aircraft carrier until 2001, when Charles de Gaulle was commissioned. He also 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. He also published a plan to reduce the number of fighters the French military had by 30.

After François Mitterrand left office in 1995, Chirac began a rapprochement with NATO by joining the Military Committee and attempting to negotiate a return to the integrated military command, which failed after the French demand for parity with the United States went unmet. The possibility of a further attempt foundered after 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.

Close call
On 25 July 2000, as Chirac and the first lady were returning from the G7 Summit in Okinawa, Japan, they were placed in a dangerous situation by Air France Flight 4590 after they landed at Charles de Gaulle International Airport. The first couple were in an Air France Boeing 747 taxiing toward the terminal when the jet had to stop and wait for Flight 4590 to take off. The departing plane, an Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde, ran over a strip of metal on takeoff puncturing its left fuel tank and sliced electrical wires near the left landing gear. The sequence of events ignited a large fire and caused the Concorde to veer left on its takeoff roll. As it reached takeoff speed and lifted off the ground, it came within 30 feet of hitting Chirac's 747. The photograph of Flight 4590 ablaze, the only picture taken of the Concorde on fire, was taken by passenger Toshihiko Sato on Chirac's jetliner.

Second term: 2002–2007
At the age of 69, Chirac faced his fourth presidential campaign in 2002. He received 20% of the vote in the first ballot of the presidential elections in April 2002. It had been expected that he would face incumbent prime minister Lionel Jospin (PS) in the second round of elections; instead, Chirac faced far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front (FN), who came in 200,000 votes ahead of Jospin. All parties other than the National Front (except for Lutte ouvrière) called for opposing Le Pen, even if it meant voting for Chirac. The 14-day period between the two rounds of voting was marked by demonstrations against Le Pen and slogans such as "Vote for the crook, not for the fascist" or "Vote with a clothespin on your nose". Chirac won re-election by a landslide, with 82 per cent of the vote on the second ballot. However, Chirac became increasingly unpopular during his second term. According to a July 2005 poll, 37 per cent judged Chirac favourably and 63 per cent unfavorably. In 2006, The Economist wrote that Chirac "is the most unpopular occupant of the Elysée Palace in the fifth republic's history."

Early term
As the left-wing Socialist Party was in thorough disarray following Jospin's defeat, Chirac reorganised politics on the right, establishing a new party – initially called the Union of the Presidential Majority, then the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The RPR had broken down; a number of members had formed Eurosceptic breakaways. While the Giscardian liberals of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) had moved to the right, the UMP won the parliamentary elections that followed the presidential poll with ease.

During an official visit to Madagascar on 21 July 2005, Chirac described the repression of the 1947 Malagasy uprising, which left between 80,000 and 90,000 dead, as "unacceptable".

Despite past opposition to state intervention the Chirac government approved a €2.8 billion aid package to troubled manufacturing giant Alstom. In October 2004, Chirac signed a trade agreement with PRC president Hu Jintao where Alstom was given €1 billion in contracts and promises of future investment in China.

Assassination attempt
On 14 July 2002, during Bastille Day celebrations, Chirac survived an assassination attempt by a lone gunman with a rifle hidden in a guitar case. The would-be assassin fired a shot toward the presidential motorcade, before being overpowered by bystanders. The gunman, Maxime Brunerie, underwent psychiatric testing; the violent far-right group with which he was associated, Unité Radicale, was thence administratively dissolved.

Foreign policy

Along with Vladimir Putin (whom he called "a personal friend"), Hu Jintao, and Gerhard Schröder, Chirac emerged as a leading voice against George W. Bush and Tony Blair in 2003 during the organisation and deployment of American and British forces participating in a military coalition to forcibly remove the government of Iraq controlled by the Ba'ath Party under the leadership of Saddam Hussein that resulted in the 2003–2011 Iraq War.

Despite British and American pressure, Chirac threatened to veto, at that given point, a resolution in the UN Security Council that would authorise the use of military force to rid Iraq of alleged weapons of mass destruction, and rallied other governments to his position. "Iraq today does not represent an immediate threat that justifies an immediate war", Chirac said on 18 March 2003. Future prime minister Dominique de Villepin acquired much of his popularity for his speech against the war at the United Nations (UN).

After Togo's leader Gnassingbé Eyadéma's death on 5 February 2005, Chirac gave him tribute and supported his son, Faure Gnassingbé, who has since succeeded his father.

On 19 January 2006, Chirac said that France was prepared to launch a nuclear strike against any country that sponsors a terrorist attack against French interests. He said his country's nuclear arsenal had been reconfigured to include the ability to make a tactical strike in retaliation for terrorism.

Chirac criticised the Israeli offensive into Lebanon on 14 July 2006. However, Israeli Army Radio later reported that 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 Chirac was a driver of this diplomatic cooperation. In July 2006, the G8 met to discuss international energy concerns. Despite the rising awareness of global warming issues, the G8 focused on "energy security" issues. Chirac continued to be the voice within the G8 summit meetings to support international action to curb global warming and climate change concerns. Chirac warned that "humanity is dancing on a volcano" and called for serious action by the world's leading industrialised nations.

After Chirac's death in 2019, the street leading to the Louvre Abu Dhabi was named Jacques Chirac Street in November 2019 in celebration of Chirac's efforts to bolster links between France and the United Arab Emirates during his presidency.

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

Flight tax
Chirac requested the Landau-report (published in September 2004) 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 (issued in December 2004), these documents present various opportunities for innovative financing mechanisms while equally stressing the advantages (stability and predictability) of tax-based models. The UNITAID project was born. Today the organisation's executive board is chaired by Marisol Touraine.

2005 referendum on TCE
On 29 May 2005, a referendum was held in France to decide whether the country should ratify the proposed treaty for a Constitution of the European Union (TCE). The result was a victory for the No campaign, with 55 per cent of voters rejecting the treaty on a turnout of 69 per cent, dealing a devastating blow to Chirac and the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, and to part of the centre-left which had supported the TCE. Following the referendum defeat, Chirac replaced his prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin with Dominique de Villepin. In an address to the nation, Chirac declared that the new cabinet's top priority was to curb unemployment, which was consistently hovering above 10 per cent, calling for a "national mobilisation" to that effect.

2005 civil unrest and CPE protests
Following major student protests in spring 2006, which followed civil unrest in autumn 2005 after the death of two young boys in Clichy-sous-Bois, one of the poorest communes in Paris' suburbs, Chirac retracted the proposed First Employment Contract (CPE) by "promulgating [it] without applying it", an unheard-of – and, some claim, illegal – move intended to appease the protesters while giving the appearance of not making a volte-face regarding the contract, and therefore to continue his support for his prime minister Dominique de Villepin.

Retirement
In early September 2005, Chirac suffered an event that his doctors described as a "vascular incident". It was officially reported as a "minor stroke" or a mild stroke (also known as a transient ischemic attack). He recovered and returned to his duties soon afterward.

In a pre-recorded television broadcast aired on 11 March 2007, he announced, in a widely predicted move, that he would not choose to seek a third term as president. (In 2000 the constitution had been amended to reduce the length of the presidential term to five years, so his second term was shorter than his first.) "My whole life has been committed to serving France, and serving peace", Chirac said, adding that he would find new ways to serve France after leaving office. He did not explain the reasons for his decision. He 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.

Post-presidency and death
Shortly after leaving office, he launched the Fondation Chirac in June 2008. Since then it has been striving for peace through five advocacy programmes: conflict prevention, access to water and sanitation, access to quality medicines and healthcare, access to land resources, and preservation of cultural diversity. It supports field projects that involve local people and provide concrete and innovative solutions. Chirac chaired the jury for the Prize for Conflict Prevention awarded every year by his foundation.

As a former president of France, he was entitled to a lifetime pension and personal security protection, and was an ex officio member for life of the Constitutional Council. He sat for the first time on the council on 15 November 2007, six months after leaving the presidency. Immediately after Sarkozy's victory, Chirac moved into a 180 sqm duplex on the Quai Voltaire in Paris lent to him by the family of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. During the Didier Schuller affair, the latter accused Hariri of having participated in illegal funding of the RPR's political campaigns, but the judge closed the case without further investigations.

In Volume 2 of his memoirs published in June 2011, Chirac mocked his successor Nicolas Sarkozy as "irritable, rash, impetuous, disloyal, ungrateful, and un-French". Chirac wrote that he considered firing Sarkozy previously, and conceded responsibility in allowing Jean-Marie Le Pen to advance in 2002. A poll conducted in 2010 suggested Chirac was the most admired political figure in France, while Sarkozy was 32nd.

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

Chirac suffered from frail health and memory loss in later life. In February 2014 he was admitted to hospital because of pains related to gout. On 10 December 2015, 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. According to his son-in-law Frederic Salat-Baroux, Chirac was again hospitalised in Paris with a lung infection on 18 September 2016.

Death and state funeral
Chirac died at his home in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on 26 September 2019, surrounded by his family. A requiem mass was held at Saint-Sulpice on 30 September, celebrated by Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris, and attended by representatives from about 175 countries, included 69 past and present heads of state, government and international organisations. Notable names included António Guterres, Jean-Claude Juncker, Jens Stoltenberg, Vladimir Putin, Sergio Mattarella, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Charles Michel, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Saad Hariri, Borut Pahor, Salome Zourabichvili, Tony Blair, Jean Chrétien, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Bill Clinton, Hamid Karzai, Dai Bingguo plus many ministers.

The day was declared a national day of mourning in France and a minute of silence was held nationwide at 15:00. Following the public ceremony, Chirac was buried at Montparnasse Cemetery, with only close family in attendance. Andorra announced three days of national mourning. Lebanon declared the day of the ex-president's funeral national day of mourning.

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

Because of Jacques Chirac's long public career, he was often parodied or caricatured: Young Jacques Chirac is the basis of a young, dashing bureaucrat character in the 1976 Asterix comic strip album Obelix and Co., proposing methods to quell Gallic unrest to elderly, old-style Roman politicians. Chirac was also featured in Le Bêbête Show as an overexcited, jumpy character.

A major fixture of the Guignols
Jacques Chirac was a favourite character of Les Guignols de l'Info, a satiric latex puppet show. He was originally portrayed as a rather likeable, though overexcited, character; following the corruption allegations, however, he was depicted as a kind of dilettante and incompetent who pilfered public money and lied through his teeth. His character for a while developed a superhero alter ego, Super Menteur ('super liar') to get him out of embarrassing situations.

Satirical songs
In 1988, the band Parabellum lambasted Chirac in their song Anarchie en Chiraquie ("anarchy in Chirac-land"). In 1995, Zebda criticized Chirac's declarations on the "noise and smell" of immigrant families.

Because of his alleged improprieties, Chirac was lambasted in a song Chirac en prison ('Chirac in prison') by French punk band Les Wampas, with a video clip made by the Guignols. Similarly, the band Sinsemilia lambasted Chirac in the song Bienvenue en Chiraquie ("Welcome to Chirac-land") as being the leader of a political mafia behaving outside of the laws applicable to normal citizenry. In June 2005, the band attracted media controversy when, on live television during midday news, it stopped early playing the gentle Tout le bonheur du monde and instead started playing Bienvenue en Chiraquie as a political gesture, before being cut early.

Ig Nobel
He was given the Ig Nobel prize for peace, for commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic bomb tests in the Pacific (1996).

Portrayals in film
J. Grant Albrecht voices Chirac in the Oliver Stone film W. Marc Rioufol plays him in Richard Loncraine's 2010 film The Special Relationship.

Bernard Le Coq portrays Chirac in La Dernière Campagne and The Conquest by Xavier Durringer.

Osirak controversy
At the invitation of Saddam Hussein (then vice-president of Iraq, but de facto dictator), Chirac made an official visit to Baghdad in 1975. Hussein approved a deal granting French oil companies a number of privileges plus a 23-percent share of Iraqi oil. As part of this deal, France sold Iraq the Osirak MTR nuclear reactor, designed to test nuclear materials.

The Israeli Air Force alleged that the reactor's imminent commissioning was a threat to its security, and pre-emptively bombed the Osirak reactor on 7 June 1981, provoking considerable anger from French officials and the United Nations Security Council.

The Osirak deal became a controversy again in 2002–2003, when an international military coalition led by the United States invaded Iraq and forcibly removed Hussein's government from power. France led several other European countries in an effort to prevent the invasion. The Osirak deal was then used by parts of the American media to criticise the Chirac-led opposition to starting a war in Iraq, despite French involvement in the Gulf War.

Conviction for corruption
Chirac has been named in several cases of alleged corruption that occurred during his term as mayor, some of which have led to felony convictions of some politicians and aides. However, a controversial judicial decision in 1999 granted Chirac immunity while he was president of France. He refused to testify on these matters, arguing that it would be incompatible with his presidential functions. Investigations concerning the running of Paris's city hall, the number of whose municipal employees increased 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 system acquired very cheaply by the Compagnie Générale des Eaux and the Lyonnaise des Eaux, then directed by Jérôme Monod, a close friend of Chirac, were also criticised. Furthermore, the satirical newspaper Le Canard enchaîné revealed the astronomical "food expenses" paid by the Parisian municipality (€15 million a year according to the Canard, expenses managed by Roger Romani (who allegedly destroyed all archives of the period 1978–93 during night raids in 1999–2000). Thousands of people were invited each year to receptions in the Paris city hall, while many political, media and artistic personalities were hosted in private flats owned by the city.

Chirac's immunity from prosecution ended in May 2007, when he left office as president. In November 2007 a preliminary charge of misuse of public funds was filed against him. 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 Chirac to stand trial on embezzlement charges, dating back to his time as mayor of Paris.

On 7 March 2011, he went on trial on charges of diverting public funds, accused of giving fictional city jobs to 28 activists from his political party while serving as the mayor of Paris (1977–95). Along with Chirac, nine others stood trial in two separate cases, one dealing with fictional jobs for 21 people and the other with jobs for the remaining seven. The President of Union for a Popular Movement, who later served as France's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alain Juppé, was sentenced to a 14-month suspended prison sentence for the same case in 2004.

On 15 December 2011, Chirac was found guilty and given a suspended sentence of two years. He was convicted of diverting public funds, abuse of trust and illegal conflict of interest. The suspended sentence meant he did not have to go to prison, and took into account his age, health, and status as a former head of state. He did not attend his trial, since medical doctors deemed that his neurological problems damaged his memory. His defence team decided not to appeal.

The Clearstream Affair
During April and May 2006, Chirac's administration was beset by a crisis as his chosen prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, was accused of asking Philippe Rondot, a top level French spy, for a secret investigation into Villepin's chief political rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2004. This matter has been called the second Clearstream Affair. On 10 May 2006, following a Cabinet meeting, Chirac made a rare television appearance to try to protect Villepin from the scandal and to debunk allegations that Chirac himself had set up a Japanese bank account containing 300 million francs in 1992 as Mayor of Paris. Chirac said that "The Republic is not a dictatorship of rumours, a dictatorship of calumny."

Personal life
In 1956, Chirac married Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, with whom he had two daughters: Laurence (4 March 1958 – 14 April 2016) and Claude (born 6 December 1962). Claude was a long-term public relations assistant and personal adviser to her father, while Laurence, who suffered from anorexia nervosa in her youth, did not participate in her father's political activities. Chirac was the grandfather of Martin Rey-Chirac by the relationship of Claude with French judoka Thierry Rey. A former Vietnamese refugee, Anh Dao Traxel, is a foster daughter of Jacques and Bernadette Chirac.

Chirac remained married, but had many other relationships.

Chirac was a close friend of actor Gregory Peck.

Academic works
In 1954, Chirac presented The Development of the Port of New-Orleans, a short geography/economic thesis to the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), which he had entered three years before. The 182-page typewritten work, supervised by Professor Jean Chardonnet, is illustrated by photographs, sketches and diagrams.

Political career

 * President of the French Republic: 1995–2007. Reelected in 2002.
 * Member of the Constitutional Council of France: Since 2007.

Governmental functions

 * Prime minister: 1974–76 (Resignation) / 1986–88.
 * Minister of Interior: March–May 1974.
 * Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development: 1972–74.
 * Minister of Relation with Parliament: 1971–72.
 * Secretary of State for Economy and Finance: 1968–71.
 * Secretary of State for Social Affairs: 1967–68.

European Parliament

 * Member of European Parliament: 1979–80 (Resignation). Elected in 1979.

National Assembly of France
Elected in 1967, reelected in 1968, 1973, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1988, 1993: Member for Corrèze: March–April 1967 (became Secretary of State in April 1967), reelected in 1968, 1973, but he remained a minister in 1976–1986 (became prime minister in 1986), 1988–95 (resigned to become President of the French Republic in 1995).

General Council

 * President of the General Council of Corrèze: 1970–1979. Reelected in 1973, 1976.
 * General councillor of Corrèze: 1968–88. Reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982.

Municipal Council

 * Mayor of Paris: 1977–95 (Resignation, became President of the French Republic in 1995). Reelected in 1983, 1989.
 * Councillor of Paris: 1977–1995 (Resignation). Reelected in 1983, 1989.
 * Municipal councillor of Sainte-Féréole: 1965–77. Reelected in 1971.

Political function

 * President of the Rally for the Republic: 1976–94 (Resignation).

First Chirac ministry
(27 May 1974 – 25 August 1976)
 * Jacques Chirac – Prime Minister
 * Jean Sauvagnargues – Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Jacques Soufflet – Minister of Defence
 * Michel Poniatowski – Minister of the Interior
 * Jean-Pierre Fourcade – Minister of Economy and Finance
 * Michel d'Ornano – Minister of Industry, Tourism, Posts, and Telecommunications
 * Michel Durafour – Minister of Employment and Social Affairs
 * Jean Lecanuet – Minister of Justice
 * René Haby – Minister of National Education
 * Simone Veil – Minister of Health
 * Christian Bonnet – Minister of Agriculture
 * Norbert Ségard – Minister of External Trade
 * Robert Galley – Minister of Equipment
 * Vincent Ansquer – Minister of Trade and Craft
 * Pierre Abelin – Minister of Cooperation
 * Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber – Minister of Reforms
 * André Jarrot – Minister of Quality of Life

Second Chirac ministry
(20 March 1986 – 12 May 1988)
 * Jacques Chirac – Prime Minister
 * Jean-Bernard Raimond – Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * André Giraud – Minister of Defence
 * Charles Pasqua – Minister of the Interior
 * Édouard Balladur – Minister of State, Minister of Economy, Finance, and Privatisation
 * Alain Madelin – Minister of Industry, Tourism, Posts, and Telecommunications
 * Philippe Séguin – Minister of Employment and Social Affairs
 * Albin Chalandon – Minister of Justice
 * René Monory – Minister of National Education
 * François Léotard – Minister of Culture and Communications
 * François Guillaume – Minister of Agriculture
 * Bernard Pons – Minister of Overseas Departments and Territories
 * Pierre Méhaignerie – Minister of Housing, Equipment, Regional Planning, and Transport
 * André Rossinot – Minister for Relations with Parliament
 * Michel Aurillac – Minister of Cooperation

Other
On 22 July 2003, Jacques Chirac was presented with the inaugural Kuala Lumpur World Peace Award by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad at his office.

Publications

 * Discours pour la France à l'heure du choix, Paris, ed. Stock, 1978
 * La Lueur de l'espérance. Réflexion du soir pour le matin, Paris, ed. La Table ronde, 1978
 * Oui à l'Europe (With Alain Berger), Paris, ed. Albatros, 1984
 * Une ambition pour la France, Paris, ed. Albin Michel, 1988
 * Une nouvelle France. Réflexions 1, Paris, ed. NiL, 1994
 * La France pour tous, Paris, ed. NiL Éditions, 1995
 * Mon combat pour la France, tome I, Paris, ed. Odile Jacob, 2006
 * Le Développement du port de la Nouvelle-Orléans, Paris, ed. Presses universitaires du Nouveau Monde, 2007
 * Mon combat pour la paix, tome II, Paris, ed. Odile Jacob, 2007
 * Demain, il sera trop tard, Paris, ed. Desclée de Brouwer, 2008
 * Mémoires : Tome I, Chaque pas doit être un but, Paris, ed. NiL, 2009
 * Mémoires : Tome II, Le Temps présidentiel, Paris, ed. NiL Éditions, 2011

In French

 * Emmanuel Hecht, Thierry Vey, Chirac de A à Z, dictionnaire critique et impertinent, Éditions Albin Michel, ISBN 2-226-07664-6
 * Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Le pouvoir et la vie, tome 3
 * Frederic Lepage, À Table avec Chirac
 * Jacques Chirac, La Nouvelle-Orléans et son port en 1954, Presses Universitaires du Nouveau Monde, ISBN 1-931948-68-2
 * Jacques Chirac, La Nouvelle-Orléans et son port en 1954, Presses Universitaires du Nouveau Monde, ISBN 1-931948-68-2

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Jacques Chirac


text:
Talk:Edmund of Abingdon

ER
This is a very nice example of incoherent 19th century nationalism. The entry depicts Edmund as a member of a "national party" in ecclesiastical politics. He was so offended at giving benefices to "Romans" that he does what? Retires to a monastery in France! GOSH the English could be self-deceiving! O.K. - there WAS no such thing as a 'national' party. The benefices were not being given to native Roman clergymen, but to members of the papal administration and Edmund was offended not as an Englishman against Italians but as a local archbishop against the central administration. I find it interesting to imagine shipping the cash from the 300 benefices from England to Rome in the 13th century - something the author of the entry elides. Oh, well. I'm going to leave this up for a little bit before revising so that others can see my rant. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by MichaelTinkler (talk • contribs)

Monied classes
I think that category has to go. --evrik 22:25, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Title
I'm not sure why the article is called Edmund Rich, as he is universally known as Edmund of Abingdon, and even the article itself says "Rich" was never applied to him and his siblings. Don't we name according to the most commonly used non-ambiguous name? Lindsay 13:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Project
Archbishops of Canterbury are all of some degree of importance to the Anglican project, be they from the middle ages, the Reformation, or beyond. -- Secisek (talk) 21:31, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
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Edmund of Abingdon Coat of arms
I have queried the change from cross patonce to cross fleury at Talk:St_Edmund_Hall,_Oxford. Please post there if you have information on the subject. TSventon (talk) 12:31, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I have reversed the edit as no evidence has been provided so far. TSventon (talk) 12:24, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Edmund of Abingdon