Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de NagyBocsa born 28 January 1955 is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012 Born in Paris he is of Hungarian Greek Jewish and French origin Mayor of NeuillysurSeine from 1983 to 2002 he was Minister of the Budget under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur 19931995 during François Mitterrands second term During Jacques Chiracs second presidential term he served as Minister of the Interior and as Minister of Finances He was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement UMP party from 2004 to 2007 He won the 2007 French presidential election by a 531 to 469 margin against Ségolène Royal the Socialist Party PS candidate During his term he faced the financial crisis of 20072008 causing a recession the European sovereign debt crisis the RussoGeorgian War for which he negotiated a ceasefire and the Arab Spring especially in Tunisia Libya and Syria He initiated the reform of French universities 2007 and the pension reform 2010 He married ItalianFrench singersongwriter Carla Bruni in 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris In the 2012 French presidential election Sarkozy was defeated by the PS candidate François Hollande by a 32 margin After leaving the presidential office Sarkozy vowed to retire from public life before coming back in 2014 being subsequently reelected as UMP leader renamed The Republicans in 2015 Being defeated at the Republican presidential primary in 2016 he retired from public life He was charged with corruption by French prosecutors in two cases notably concerning the alleged Libyan interference in the 2007 French elections In 2021 Sarkozy was convicted of corruption in two separate trials His first conviction resulted in him receiving a sentence of three years two of them suspended and one in prison he has appealed against the ruling For his second conviction he received a oneyear sentence which he is allowed to serve under home confinement Sarkozy was born in Paris and is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de NagyBócsa Hungarian nagybócsai Sárközy Pálin some sources NagyBócsay Sárközy Pál István Ernő born 5 May 1928 a Protestant Hungarian aristocrat and Andrée Jeanne Dadu Mallah 12 October 1925 12 December 2017 whose Ottoman Greek Jewish grandfather converted to Catholicism to marry Sarkozys French Catholic maternal grandmother They were married in the SaintFrançoisdeSales church 17th arrondissement of Paris on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959 During Sarkozys childhood his father founded his own advertising agency and became wealthy The family lived in a mansion owned by Sarkozys maternal grandfather Benedict Mallah in the 17th arrondissement of Paris The family later moved to NeuillysurSeine one of the wealthiest communes of the ÎledeFrance région immediately west of Paris According to Sarkozy his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father whom he rarely saw Sarkozy was raised Catholic Source Article Nicolas Sarkozy from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30