Jean-Pierre Chevènement (; born 9 March 1939) is a French politician who served as a minister in the 1980s and 1990s best known for his candidacy in the 2002 French presidential election. After serving as mayor of Belfort, he was elected to the Senate for the Territoire de Belfort in 2008. As a cofounder of the Socialist Party (PS) and founder of the Citizen and Republican Movement (MRC), he is a significant figure of the French Left.
Biography
Background
The Chevènement family is of Swiss origin, with their original name, Schwennemann, having been gallicized to Chevènement in the 18th century. He was born in Belfort near the Swiss border, speaks German, and studied in Vienna.
Beginning in politics
Chevènement's idiosyncratic left-wing nationalism has led to comparison with the late British politician Peter Shore. He describes his Eurosceptic and Gaullist position as "republican". He has said that "a minister has to keep his mouth shut; if he wants to open it, he resigns". However, he returned to the cabinet as Minister of National Education from 1984 to 1986.
Appointed Minister of Defence in 1988, he served until 1991, when he resigned due to his opposition to Operation Desert Storm, which he believed had exceeded the mandate granted by Resolution 678. In 1993 he left the PS and founded a new political party: the Citizens' Movement (Mouvement des citoyens or MDC).
Chevènement and the MDC participated in the formation of the Plural Left coalition. When it won the 1997 legislative election he became Minister of the Interior in the government of Lionel Jospin. On 2 September 1998, Chevènement underwent surgery on his gall bladder. He then had a severe allergic reaction to the anesthetic, causing him to lapse into a coma for 8 days. He began to recover, leaving the hospital on 22 October, but he could not work in his ministry for another four months. As a result of this episode he gained the nickname "the miracle of the republic". He won 5% of the vote. Many Socialists blamed Chevènement for the elimination of Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential race. Consequently, at the June 2002 legislative election, the PS invested a candidate against him in the Belfort constituency. In this, he was defeated by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) candidate and lost his parliamentary seat.
Citizen and Republican Movement
Finally, the Republican Pole split and Chevènement created the Citizen and Republican Movement (Mouvement républicain et citoyen or MRC), which described itself as a left-wing party. He reconciled with the PS when, after raising the possibility of a new presidential candidacy, he renounced this to support Ségolène Royal's candidacy in the 2007 presidential election.