Balladur, Édouard

Balladur, Édouard (1929- ), French politician and businessman, Prime Minister of France (1993-1995). Balladur was born on May 2, 1929 in Ýzmir, Turkey, to a French mercantile family, established since the 18th century in the Levant. He was educated at the Faculty of Law in Aix-en-Provence and at the elite École Nationale d'Administration. He began his career in 1957 in administration and in 1964 became an adviser to Georges Pompidou, prime minister under Charles de Gaulle and Balladur's political mentor.

Balladur continued to serve under Pompidou after the latter became President of France in 1969. At Pompidou's death in 1974 he left public life. Since 1968 he had been President of the Mont Blanc Tunnel Company, a position he retained until 1980. He also became President and General Director (1977-1986) of GSI (Générale de Service Informatique), a computer service company. He returned to politics in 1986 on his election to the National Assembly and his appointment as Minister of Finances in the left-right "cohabitation" Cabinet of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, to whom he had been an adviser since 1981. Balladur began a programme of privatization and deregulation, but his policies were abandoned when the Socialist incumbent François Mitterrand won a new mandate in the 1988 presidential elections.

Balladur remained in the National Assembly until March 1993, when he was named prime minister in a second "cohabitation" government after a Socialist defeat in parliamentary elections. He initiated a programme for economic recovery. Growth increased and unemployment stabilized, though Balladur was less successful with the public debt. Critics accused him of being an administrator rather than a politician and, faced with popular opposition to certain of his plans, he preferred to cede rather than stand firm. Nonetheless, he was popular and seemed likely to win the presidency in 1995; however, he was outdistanced in the campaign by Jacques Chirac, his former friend and close political ally, and was defeated by a narrow margin. He then returned to the National Assembly as a deputy.