Former French leftist prime minister Lionel Jospin dead at 88
Lionel Jospin, French prime minister between 1997 and 2002, has died at the age of 88, his Socialist Party (PS) announced on Monday.
Jospin is remembered for the introduction of the 35-hour week in France and for cutting the presidential term to five years from seven during his term in office. He is also credited with holding together a cross-party leftist alliance.
Jospin was born to a Protestant family of teachers in the Paris region on July 12, 1937. He became politically involved in leftist organizations at an early age, enjoying support from François Mitterrand, who served as president from 1981 to 1995.
French leftists look back on the Jospin era with nostalgia as a time when he managed to overcome differences on the left to create the “gauche plurielle” – plural left.
In 1997, his alliance beat the conservatives of Jaques Chirac, president at the time, and Jospin went on to lead a leftist-environmentalist government in so-called “cohabitation” with the conservative president.
In 1995, he secured considerable support in the first round of presidential elections, going on to lose against Chirac. But in 2002, he came in third behind Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right candidate of the Front National (FN), and did not make the runoff.
