Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (/sɑːrˈkoʊzi/ sar-KOH-zee; French: [nikɔla pɔl stefan saʁkɔzi də naʒi bɔksa] ^ⓘ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012. In 2021, he was found guilty of having tried to bribe a judge in 2014 to obtain information and spending beyond legal campaign funding limits during his 2012 re-election campaign.

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 2008 financial crisis, 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 and 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 suspended, and one in prison; he appealed against the ruling. He received a one-year sentence for his second conviction, which he is allowed to serve under home confinement. In May 2023, Sarkozy lost an appeal against his corruption conviction. In February 2024, his one-year sentence for the campaign finance conviction was revised so he would instead serve six months in prison and six months suspended.