Lionel Jospin, France’s prime minister from 1997 to 2002, has died at the age of 88, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu confirmed on Monday, after first reporting his death the previous day.
“Lionel Jospin has left us,” Lecornu said online. “His actions, guided by a special idea of social progress and republican values, leave a lasting impression and a model of commitment. Today France lost a faithful servant, whose name will forever be linked to the state.”
Who was Lionel Jospin?
Jospin was for decades a leading figure in France’s center-left Socialist Party, whose most memorable policies as prime minister included introducing the 35-hour week and instituting civil partnerships, which gave both gay and straight unmarried couples the same rights as married people.
A political slogan that perhaps best summed up his relatively liberal left-of-center position was, “Yes to a market economy, no to a market society.”
After his tenure as Prime Minister, he became known for his ill-fated bid for the presidency in the 2002 elections.
Jospin was part of a three-horse race for the top job in French politics in 2002, challenged by centre-right former President Jacques Chirac and far-right Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen, today’s far-right leader in France. Some saw him as a favorite to run to the second round, but ultimately he did not even get that far.
The characteristic of the first round of voting was that disaffected voters did not support any single candidate en masse. Chirac could only claim 19.88%, while Jospin’s 16.18% fell short of Le Pen’s 16.86%. He told a documentary filmmaker in 2010 that he had “underestimated” the extent of the divisions within France’s various left-leaning factions and the impact it would have on his first-round score.
It was the first time in modern French history that one of the two traditional centre-right and centre-left parties lost to Le Pen’s Front National, meaning the far-right leader qualified for the second round.
In defeat, Jospin earned praise for throwing his weight behind his political rival Chirac, encouraging his supporters to turn out in large numbers to support the Conservatives over Le Pen. Chirac won a landslide victory in the second round with over 80% of the vote.
The reaction against Le Pen’s performance, as well as the older man’s increasingly extreme positions, contributed to the recovery of Jospin’s Parti Socialiste over the coming decade, but his 2002 difficulties nevertheless proved an early warning of the party’s long-term decline after François Hollande became president.
Meanwhile, Jospin’s support for his mainstream rival Chirac has turned into an essential firewall in French politics, reiterated in both of Emmanuel Macron’s presidential election victories. Both times, centrists of all stripes united behind Macron against Jean-Marie’s daughter and slightly more moderate political heiress Marine Le Pen in a second-round runoff.
A similar situation seems likely, although it is not yet clear who is most likely to challenge the far-right candidate in next year’s presidential election.
What did leading French politicians say after his death?
President Macron called Jospin “a great figure in French politics” in an online tribute.
“Through his toughness, his courage and his commitment to progress, he embodied a great vision of the Republic,” Macron said.
Former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who had a close relationship with Jospin and the PS for years, said that he “left a lasting mark on French politics through his dedication, his toughness and his sense of public duty, qualities I was able to appreciate firsthand while working with him.”
Oliver Faure, who now leads the PS, said that Jospin “embodied a leftist movement that was demanding principles, principles and republicans.”
At a time when our stance is wavering, his career serves as a reminder that it is possible to govern without pandering to prevailing trends,” Faure said.
Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen did not focus on Jospin’s criticisms of her father’s “far-right” and “populist” policies, but instead focused on her objection to France’s Front National and Le Pen referring to him as a “fascist” and focused on a famous quote from 2007 when she criticized the “anti-fascist theatre” that she felt parts of her party had been guilty of over the years.
Le Pen said, “Lionel Jospin was a political opponent whose policies we opposed when he was prime minister.” “Nevertheless, he was an honest man on the left, the only one who had the courage, after the 2002 presidential election, to denounce the shameless lies of the fascist threat that was being peddled on both the right and the left between the two rounds.”
Le Pen ally Jordan Bardella, who may run for president next year for the party now known as National Rally (RN) if Le Pen cannot survive the ongoing fraud conviction and appeals, called Jospin “a leading figure of the Fifth Republic and, despite our differences, an honest man of the left.”
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon focused on Jospin’s economic legacy, particularly highlighting his introduction of the 35-hour week and “his refusal to advance the retirement age”. Raising the retirement age is a policy proposal that has proven impossible to accomplish and continues to haunt Emmanuel Macron, currently serving two terms, as it did for Chirac in the past.
Ségolène Royal, who was the next PS candidate for the presidency in 2007, losing to Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round, paid tribute to Jospin’s “unwavering moral compass”.
He said, “With him, a certain approach to politics is leaving us – an approach that respects debate and is committed to making sound decisions without insults or fury.”
Edited by: Dmytro Lyubenko