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France election 2022: the presidential candidate with the Kärcher - who is Valérie Pécresse?

2022-04-08T15:39:36.799Z


France election 2022: the presidential candidate with the Kärcher - who is Valérie Pécresse? Created: 04/08/2022, 17:32 By: Sven Hauberg Valérie Pécresse is the Republican candidate for the French presidency. © Rafael Yaghobzadeh/dpa She could challenge Emmanuel Macron for the presidency - and shocked at the beginning of the election campaign with a statement that was too blatant even for Mari


France election 2022: the presidential candidate with the Kärcher - who is Valérie Pécresse?

Created: 04/08/2022, 17:32

By: Sven Hauberg

Valérie Pécresse is the Republican candidate for the French presidency.

© Rafael Yaghobzadeh/dpa

She could challenge Emmanuel Macron for the presidency - and shocked at the beginning of the election campaign with a statement that was too blatant even for Marine Le Pen: Who is Valérie Pécresse?

Paris - Suddenly he was there again, the Kärcher.

In an interview with the southern French daily newspaper

La Provence

, Valérie Pécresse dug deep into the dustbin of political polemics and rediscovered the high-pressure cleaner from Germany.

"I'll get the Kärcher out of the basement again.

It's been there for ten years and it's time to use it," toned the 54-year-old French Republican politician.

In France, when they hear the word "Kärcher", many people not only think of cleaning the veranda at home, but also of their former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In 2005, two years before moving into the Élysée Palace, he had visited a Paris suburb where an eleven-year-old boy had previously been shot.

"The scum" responsible for the crime must be removed "with the Kärcher," Sarkozy told a concerned resident at the time.

France election 2022: who is Valérie Pécresse?

Valérie Pécresse, who could make it into the run-off in the first round of the presidential elections on February 10, now had something similar in mind with her Kärcher analogy as Sarkozy once did.

"It's about restoring order to the streets," she said.

Because: “There is no longer an answer to the violence of the new barbarians.” Pécresse suggested deploying “powerful brigades”, including “the army”, to take action against crime and gang violence in the suburbs.

A deployment of the army at the gates of Paris - that went too far even for Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the right-wing Rassemblement National.

But Valérie Pécresse arrives with her sharp tones.

Polls put her second in the race for the presidency, albeit several percentage points behind incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

The right-wing competition - in addition to Le Pen, this is the ultra-right Eric Zemmour - follow at a short distance.

Since it cannot be assumed that Macron will win an absolute majority in the first round of the elections, and because the French right is fragmented, Pécresse's name is likely to be on the ballot papers in the April 24 runoff.

With 61 percent of the votes, she prevailed in a membership vote by the Republicans against the much more radical Éric Ciotti as the presidential candidate at the beginning of December.

"The Republican right is back," she said after her election.

"We will give our country its unity,

Presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse - Trained at the ENA training center

Valérie Pécresse was born Valérie Anne Émilie Roux on July 14, 1967 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a posh suburb west of Paris.

Her father is the well-known economist and entrepreneur Dominique Roux.

She attended a private school, learned Russian in her youth and later Japanese.

She graduated from high school at the age of 16 and then embarked on a path that many top French politicians have taken: After studying at a renowned Paris business university, Pécresse switched to the École National d'Administration (ENA) in Strasbourg, and its graduates also Emmanuel Macron and many former presidents such as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Hollande count.

After her studies, Valérie Pécresse began working for the Council of State, of which she was a member until she left in 2015.

The Council of State (Conseil d'État) is the highest administrative court in France and also advises the government on legal issues.

In 1998, Jacques Chirac, who was French President from 1995 to 2007, made Pécresse his advisor.

From then on, she took care of issues such as juvenile delinquency, city politics and state reform.

In June 2002, Pécresse became a member of the French National Assembly for Chirac's Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP).

In the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, she was initially the rapporteur for the budget for prisons and youth court aid and later made a name for herself as a specialist in family policy issues.

At the same time, Pécresse made a career in her party and first became deputy general secretary of the UMP and later its spokeswoman.

In March 2004 she was also elected regional councilor for the Île-de-France region.

Valérie Pécresse: Career under Nicolas Sarkozy

With the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy (the one with the Kärcher) in the presidential elections in 2007, Valérie Pécresse became Minister for Research and Higher Education in his government.

Shortly afterwards, against the resistance of many students and academics, she pushed through the law on university autonomy, which many party friends consider to be one of the greatest successes of the Sarkozy government.

Similarly controversial among the population was her reform of the status of teachers and researchers in 2009, which also led to protests.

During Pécresse's time as Research Minister, her commitment to environmental and climate protection also falls.

During the last 12 months of Sarkozy's presidency, Valérie Pécresse succeeded Christine Lagarde, current ECB President, as Minister of Budget, Public Finance and State Reform and Government Spokesperson.

The debt crisis in the euro zone in particular determined her term of office.

After Sarkozy lost the 2012 presidential election to socialist François Hollande, Pécresse returned to the National Assembly as a deputy.

Three years later, in December 2015, she was elected the first female president of the Île-de-France regional council.

Pécresse has remained in office since her re-election in July 2021.

Valérie Pécresse in the 2022 French elections: your political positions

Valérie Pécresse spent much of her political life as a member of the French Republicans (Les Républicains, until the end of May 2015 Union pour un mouvement populaire, UMP).

In the mid-2010s, however, she began to become increasingly alienated from her political homeland.

In a dispute with party leader Laurent Wauquiez, Pécresse founded the intra-party movement Soyons Libre in 2017, which pursues a liberal-conservative and pro-Europe course and was made an independent party by Pécresse in 2019.

Just two years later, Soyons Libre was re-affiliated with the Republicans, for which Pécresse is now campaigning as a presidential candidate.

Pécresse describes himself as liberal on economic issues and in an interview with

Le Point

magazine last year described himself as "two-thirds Merkel and one-third Thatcher".

If she wins the presidential election, she wants to raise the statutory retirement age from 62 to 65 and abolish the 35-hour week.

She also advocates a reduction in unemployment benefits.

At the European level, she is in favor of strengthening the EU.

Socially, Valérie Pécresse is rather conservative.

The mother of three, who has been married to businessman Jérôme Pécresse since 1994, voted against the introduction of marriage for all and took part in several demonstrations against gay equality in marriage law.

During her 2015 election campaign for regional council president, Pécresse made headlines with her suggestion that high school students should be tested for cannabis use - a move that ultimately fell through.

Presidential election campaign in France: candidate Valérie Pécresse

In the current presidential election campaign, Pécresse takes a similarly hard line on questions of foreigners policy as her competitors Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.

As early as 2014, as a member of the National Assembly, Pécresse submitted a draft to tighten the anti-burqa law.

Today she supports the introduction of annual caps for immigrants.

People who have been in France for less than five years should be excluded from social benefits.

And if that's not enough to establish law and order, you still have the Kärcher.

The France election 2022 at Merkur.de

You can get the latest developments in the presidential elections in France on April 10 in the news ticker at

Merkur.de

.

If there is no clear result on the evening of the election, then the decision will be made in the run-off election on April 24th.

(sh)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-04-08

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