Raffarin, Jean-Pierre

▪ 2003

      When newly reelected Pres. Jacques Chirac named Jean-Pierre Raffarin prime minister of France on May 6, 2002, fewer than half the French people knew who the latter was. That, of course, was the Gaullist president's point.

      After five years of having to share power with the Socialists, Chirac wanted a premier who not only would not eclipse him but also would be as far removed as possible from the traditional arrogant Parisian image of past prime ministers. In short, the president was looking for a modest provincial, and he appeared to find him in Raffarin, a man of rumpled suits and little swagger who had a political base in western France. Raffarin's only previous national ministerial experience was looking after small business in 1995–97, and the only mark he had left was legislation that made it harder for big supermarkets to expand at the expense of small corner shops.

      In his first months as prime minister, Raffarin cultivated the image of being open to, and part of, la France d'en bas—the France of ordinary people—and of being guilelessly determined to improve their lot. The reality of his background was slightly different. He was born on Aug. 3, 1948, at Poitiers. His father had been a member of the National Assembly and a government minister, responsible for agriculture.

      Raffarin was educated in Poitiers and Paris, with law studies followed by a business school diploma. He became a product manager for the Jacques Vabre coffee business, but he was quickly attracted into centre-right politics by Pres. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and spent five years (1976–81) as a political appointee in the Labour Ministry. After the Socialist victory in 1981, Raffarin returned to marketing with the Bernard Krief management consultants, where his speciality was development strategies for towns and local authorities. He had entered local politics in Poitiers in the late 1970s, and by 1988 he was president of the regional council for the Poitou-Charentes region.

      Until elevated into the premiership, Raffarin had little experience of national elections. His election in 1989 to the European Parliament was through a system that depended more on a candidate's position on his party list than on individual merit, while the French Senate, to which he was elected in 1995 and 1997, used indirect voting. Raffarin placed himself in the middle of the fragmented political world of the French right. He rose through the centre-right Union for French Democracy, but after the first round of the 2002 presidential election, he was quick to support Chirac's new Union for Presidential Majority.

      As prime minister, Raffarin proved a pragmatic number two to Chirac. He cut income tax and restrained growth in the minimum wage, but moved very cautiously on partial privatization of state utilities, pension reform, and civil service cuts. Similarly, Raffarin would not let his former Europeanism prevent his government from opposing reforms to European Union farming and fishing regulations.

David Buchan

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