Gérard Araud (born 20 February 1953) is a retired French diplomat who served as Ambassador of France to the United States from 2014 to 2019. He previously served as Director General for Political and Security Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006–2009) and France's permanent representative to the United Nations (2009–2014).
Jean-Pierre Jouyet (born 13 February 1954) is a French civil servant. He was the ambassador of France to the United Kingdom between 2017 and 2019.
Paul Hermelin (born April 30, 1952) is a French businessman who is the chairman of Capgemini.
Claude Guéant (born 17 January 1945) is a French civil servant. The former chief of staff to Nicolas Sarkozy, he served as Minister of the Interior from 27 February 2011 until 15 May 2012. He is a member of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).
Françoise Chandernagor (born 15 June 1945, Palaiseau) is a French writer. The daughter of André Chandernagor, she is a former student of the École nationale d'administration, and she became a member of the Council of State in 1969.
Richard Descoings (French: [ʁiʃaʁ dekwɛ̃]; June 23, 1958 – April 3, 2012) was a French civil servant. He was serving as the Director of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (French: Institut d'études politiques de Paris or Sciences Po Paris), and as such as the Chief Administrator of the National Foundation of Political Science (Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, FNSP). These two entities are collectively referred to as Sciences Po (see Use of Sciences Po), and are two of the most prestigious public policy research and teaching bodies in Europe. Descoings was also a senior member of the Conseil d'État.
Michel Bon (born 5 July 1943) is a French businessman and politician. He is a graduate of the ESSEC Business School, of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, of the École nationale d'administration and of Stanford Business School.In 1981, he was selected to be one of the first Young Leaders of the French-American Foundation.He worked at the banks Crédit national and Crédit Agricole. He has been CEO then Chairman of the supermarket group Carrefour. From 1993 to 1995 he was head of the French unemployment agency. He was Chairman of France Télécom from 1995 to 2002.He was formerly president of the Institut Pasteur. He is also an administrator at Lafarge and formerly of Air Liquide.
Jacques José Mardoché Attali (French pronunciation: [ʒak atali]; born 1 November 1943) is a French economic and social theorist, writer, political adviser and senior civil servant.
A very prolific writer, Attali published 86 books in 54 years, between 1969 and 2023.
Attali served as a counselor to President François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1991, and was the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1991 to 1993. In 1997, upon the request of education minister Claude Allègre, he proposed a reform of the higher education degrees system. From 2008 to 2010, he led the government committee on how to ignite the growth of the French economy, under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Attali co-founded the European program EUREKA, dedicated to the development of new technologies. He also founded the non-profit organization PlaNet Finance, now called Positive Planet, and is the head of Attali & Associates (A&A), an international consultancy firm on strategy, corporate finance and venture capital. Interested in the arts, he has been nominated to serve on the board of the Musée d’Orsay. He has published more than fifty books, including Verbatim (1981), Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), Labyrinth in Culture and Society: Pathways to Wisdom (1999), and A Brief History of the Future (2006).
In 2009, Foreign Policy called him as one of the top 100 "global thinkers" in the world.
François Gérard Marie Léotard (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ʒeʁaʁ maʁi leɔtaʁ]; 26 March 1942 – 25 April 2023) was a French politician. Singer and actor Philippe Léotard was his brother.
A member of the Republican Party, the liberal-conservative component of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), he appeared in the foreground of the political scene in the 1980s. He led a new generation of right-wing politicians, the "renovationmen", who opposed the old right-wing leaders Jacques Chirac and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
In 1981, he was selected to be one of the first Young Leaders of the French-American Foundation. His political career started with being elected as the mayor of Fréjus in 1977. He served two terms as the deputy of Var.As culture minister from 1986 to 1988, he sold the main public TV channel TF1. He returned to the French cabinet as defense minister, from 1993 to 1995. Supporting the candidacy of Edouard Balladur in the 1995 presidential election, he was dismissed after Chirac's election. Elected president of the UDF in 1996, he could not prevent the split of this confederation two years later with Alain Madelin's secession. This and the party's poor showing in the 1998 regional elections prompted his resignation. After a mission in Macedonia in 2001 as representative of the European Union, he retired from politics. In 2003, he created together with other prominent European personalities the Medbridge Strategy Center, whose goal is to promote dialogue and mutual understanding between Europe and the Middle East. He later authored several books.
Léotard died in Fréjus on 25 April 2023, at age 81.
Philippe Séguin (21 April 1943 – 7 January 2010) was a French political figure who was President of the National Assembly from 1993 to 1997 and President of the Cour des Comptes of France from 2004 to 2010.
He entered the Court of Financial Auditors in 1970, but he began a political career in the Neo-Gaullist party RPR. In 1978, he was elected to the National Assembly as a deputy for the Vosges département. He was Mayor of Épinal between 1983 and 1997.
Representing the social tradition of the Gaullism, he was Minister of Social Affairs in Jacques Chirac's cabinet, from 1986 to 1988.
After Chirac's defeat at the 1988 presidential election, he allied with Charles Pasqua and criticized the abandonment of Gaullist doctrine by the RPR executive. He accused Alain Juppé and Édouard Balladur of wanting an alignment on liberal and pro-European policies.
In 1992, he played a leading role in the No campaign against the Maastricht Treaty. On the eve of the vote he opposed President François Mitterrand in a televised debate.
As president of the National Assembly from 1993 to 1997, he supported the winning candidacy of Jacques Chirac at the 1995 presidential election. He inspired the theme of Chirac's campaign which was named "the social fracture".
Their relations deteriorated when he took the lead of the RPR, after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 legislative election. He failed to change the name of the party to "The Rally". He criticized the ascendancy of President Chirac within the party, refusing to be the leader of a "Chirac's fan-club". He resigned in 1999 just before the European elections, leaving his deputy Nicolas Sarkozy in charge.
As the RPR's official candidate, he lost the 2001 mayoral election in Paris. Refusing the merger of the Neo-Gaullist party with the right-wing classical forces in the Union for a Popular Movement, he quit politics in 2002.
He died at the age of 66 on 7 January 2010 from a heart attack.