Jean Arthuis

Jean Arthuis (* October 7, 1944 Saint -Martin -du -Bois in the department of Maine -et -Loire ) is a French centrist politician.

Career

Arthuis 1971 Mayor of Château- Gontier in the Mayenne. In 1976 he became a member in 1982 Vice President of the Department Council ( conseil général) of Mayenne. He was a member of the founded under President Giscard d' Estaing and then still organized as a loose coalition of centrist parties Small UDF.

In 1983 he was Senator of the Mayenne, 1986 State Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and 1987 in the Economy and Finance in the UDF -RPR ( Rassemblement pour la République) government of Jacques Chirac. After the defeat of the bourgeois camp 1988, he was initially limited again on local politics. Since 1992 he has been President of the Conseil Général de la Mayenne. After the election of Jacques Chirac as president in 1995, he returned to the National Policy and is first Minister of Planning and Economic Development, then from August 1995 Economic and Finance Ministers to power in 1997. 1998, he is leader of the UDF in the Senate until the return of the Socialists the division of the liberal conservative party rights under Alain Madelin. Since 2002 he is Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Party affiliation

After a long career as representative of the Christian Social and social- liberal tendencies of the UDF, he gets into skepticism about the strategy of his boss François Bayrou, who decided in 2007 to break the alliance with the liberal conservative camp (UMP ). But he did not join the Nouveau Centre at, which supported the government of Nicolas Sarkozy, but remained UDF member until its dissolution within the Mouvement démocrate whose foundation he described in 2008 as a failure. Since then he has worked with his club " rassembler les Centristes " ( The centrists gather ) and his small party " Alliance Centriste " ( Centrist Alliance) at a reunion of the political center of France modeled after the UDF. He was also involved in the 2012 founding of the Union of démocrates et independents pursuing exactly that goal.