Fabius, Laurent

Fabius, Laurent (1946- ), French civil servant and politician, Prime Minister of France (1984-1986). Fabius was born in Paris on August 20, 1946, and educated at the École Normale Supérieure and the École Nationale d'Administration. He began his career in 1973 in the civil service. Elected to the National Assembly as a Socialist in 1978, he became the French Socialist Party's First Secretary and spokesman in 1979, at the same time serving as Cabinet Director to François Mitterrand. On his party's victory in 1981, Fabius was appointed to the Ministry of Finance with responsibility for the budget. In 1983 he became Minister of Industry and Research and in 1984, aged 38, the youngest prime minister in French history.

As Prime Minister, Fabius maintained the Socialist policies of his immediate predecessor. A protégé of Mitterrand, Fabius expressed in public his doubts about his mentor's hospitality to the Polish Communist General Wojciech Jaruzelski in 1985. Although his government's austerity measures reduced inflation, the Socialists lost the legislative elections in 1986. In the "cohabitation" that followed, Mitterrand remained President, but with a Gaullist prime minister and government. When the Socialists returned to power in 1988, Fabius became Speaker of the National Assembly. In March 1993 the Socialists experienced a devastating defeat in parliamentary elections.

Fabius's own career suffered, at the same time, from accusations that his government had allowed untested blood contaminated with AIDS to be used in hospital transfusions. His election as leader of the opposition in the National Assembly in October 1995 signalled his return to the forefront of French politics after several years in the shadows. In March 1997 French prosecutors decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge Fabius with complicity in the AIDS-contaminated blood scandal. In the end it took the newly formed Court of Justice of the Republic, which had been created in 1993 with the specific task of trying members of the government for alleged offences committed while in office, to finally bring charges against Fabius. However, in March 1999 he was acquited of manslaughter and criminal negligence.