Biography
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who held the office of President of France from 2007 to 2012.
Born in Paris, he has Hungarian, Greek Jewish, and French heritage. He served as Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine from 1983 to 2002 and was Minister of the Budget under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur from 1993 to 1995 during François Mitterrand's second term. During Jacques Chirac's second presidency, he occupied the roles of Minister of the Interior and Minister of Finances. He led the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party from 2004 to 2007.
Sarkozy won the 2007 French presidential election with 53.1% of the vote, defeating Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal, who received 46.9%. His presidency was marked by challenges including the 2007–2008 financial crisis (leading to a recession and the European sovereign debt crisis), the Russo-Georgian War (where he brokered a ceasefire), and the Arab Spring, particularly in Tunisia, Libya, and Syria. He introduced reforms to French universities in 2007 and pension reforms in 2010. In 2008, he married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
In the 2012 presidential election, Sarkozy was defeated by Socialist candidate François Hollande by a margin of 3.2%. After his presidency, he initially announced retirement from public life but returned in 2014, reclaiming leadership of the UMP, which was renamed The Republicans in 2015. Following defeat in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he retired again from public life. He faced corruption charges in two separate cases, notably regarding alleged Libyan interference in the 2007 elections. In 2021, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption in two trials. His first conviction resulted in a three-year sentence, with two years suspended and one year of imprisonment; he appealed this verdict. For the second conviction, he received a one-year sentence to be served under house arrest.
Sarkozy was born in Paris to Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa (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 Sarkozy's French Catholic maternal grandmother. His parents married in the Saint-François-de-Sales church in Paris's 17th arrondissement on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959.
During his childhood, Sarkozy's father established a successful advertising agency, amassing wealth. The family resided in a mansion owned by Sarkozy's maternal grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in Paris's 17th arrondissement before relocating to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy suburb west of Paris. Sarkozy has noted that his grandfather, a committed Gaullist, influenced him more than his father, whom he seldom saw. He was raised in the Catholic faith.
