Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa ( sar-KOH-zee; French: [nikɔla pɔl stefan saʁkɔzi də naʒi bɔksa] ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as the president of France and co-prince of Andorra from 2007 to 2012.

Born in Paris, his roots are 1/2 Hungarian Protestant, 1/4 Greek Jewish, and 1/4 French Catholic. Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine from 1983 to 2002, he was Minister of the Budget under Prime Minister Édouard Balladur (1993–1995) during François Mitterrand's second term. During Jacques Chirac's second presidential term he served as Minister of the Interior and as Minister of Finances. He was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party from 2004 to 2007.

He won the 2007 French presidential election by a 53.1% to 46.9% margin against Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party (PS) candidate. During his term, he faced the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the late-2000s recession, and the European sovereign debt crisis, the Russo-Georgian War (for which he negotiated a ceasefire), and the Arab Spring (especially in Tunisia, Libya, and Syria). He initiated the reform of French universities (2007) and the pension reform (2010). He married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni in 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

In the 2012 French presidential election, Sarkozy was defeated by the PS candidate François Hollande, by a 3.2% margin. After leaving the presidential office, Sarkozy vowed to retire from public life before coming back in 2014, being reelected as UMP leader (renamed The Republicans in 2015). Being defeated at the Republican presidential primary in 2016, he retired from public life.

He was charged with corruption by French prosecutors in two cases, notably concerning the alleged Libyan interference in the 2007 French elections. In 2021, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption in two separate trials. His first conviction resulted in him receiving a sentence of three years, two of them suspended and one in prison; he has appealed against the ruling. For his second conviction, he received a one-year sentence, which he is allowed to serve under home confinement. In May 2023, Sarkozy lost an appeal to his corruption conviction.