Former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur died on Monday August 31 in Paris at the age of 97, his family announced to AFP.
“A mass will be given in strict family privacy,” the same source added, without further details.
Édouard Balladur was François Mitterrand’s last Prime Minister from March 1993 to May 1995. He will go down in political history as Jacques Chirac’s “friend of thirty years” who became his rival during a fierce 1995 presidential campaign which put an end to his ambitions.
“This faithful follower of President Pompidou whom he accompanied during his mandate had France at his heart. He was its demanding, measured, devoted servant,” greeted Emmanuel Macron on X.
“He was a statesman, with a reforming spirit and will remain a reference for many men and women in his political family,” reacted Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on X.
“Seeking to convince and never to seduce, he was one of those politicians who have a high opinion of voters because they have a noble idea of France,” greeted the boss of LR Bruno Retailleau.
“I would not have had the political career that was mine without his trust and without his friendship. He stood by me in good times as well as in trials, and his affection never failed me”, added on “I am mourning this evening the loss of one of the men who counted the most in my life,” concludes the former head of state.
Entering the cabinet of Georges Pompidou at the age of 35, then Prime Minister under General de Gaulle, Édouard Balladur participated in 1968 alongside Jacques Chirac in the Grenelle agreements.
“I did not fully understand the events of May 68,” admitted this conservative in a testamentary column published at the end of April 2026 in Le Figaro, admitting to having missed “a crisis of civilization”.
He followed his mentor to the Élysée as deputy secretary general then secretary general of the presidency. Then Jacques Chirac, who became president of the RPR, came to seek him out and bring him back to politics in the 1980s.
“I showed too much distance and coldness”
In 1988, François Mitterrand was re-elected for his second term and the right lost the legislative elections. She had her revenge five years later in the 1993 legislative elections, forcing the socialist president into a new cohabitation.
Leader of the right, Jacques Chirac has no desire to return to Matignon and lets Édouard Balladur settle there.
The latter becomes a popular Prime Minister. With the support of a majority of public opinion and the Pasqua clan, he declared himself a presidential candidate in January 1995.
Long in the lead in the first round, he saw his lead dwindle over the weeks. His image blends in with the caricatures of the designer Plantu who represents him in Le Monde with a Louis XV wig on a sedan chair.
“Over the years, I have shown too much distance and coldness in the public role that I had to play, so much so that the policy that I inspired or led myself seemed to the French people to lack warmth and influence,” he admitted in the same forum.
This failure will sound the death knell for its national ambitions and this fratricidal battle between the two “thirty-year-old” friends – Chirac’s expression – will permanently divide the right.
Retired from political life, Édouard Balladur was subsequently implicated for suspicion of secret financing of his presidential campaign, thanks to kickbacks on arms contracts with Pakistan. He was acquitted by the Court of Justice of the Republic in 2021, but not his former Minister of Defense François Léotard, now deceased, who was sentenced to two suspended prison sentences.
With AFP
