Dominique de Villepin

Biography

Dominique de Villepin was born in Rabat in 1953, the son of a diplomat and later senator, and grew up partly in Venezuela and the United States, graduating from the Lycée Français de New York in 1971. He studied at Sciences Po and the École nationale d'administration and took degrees in law and literature at Panthéon-Assas and Paris Nanterre.

He joined the diplomatic service in 1980, serving in Washington and New Delhi and as the foreign ministry's chief adviser on Africa. An adviser to Jacques Chirac from the early 1980s, he became chief of staff to foreign minister Alain Juppé in 1993, ran Chirac's 1995 presidential campaign, and was secretary-general of the Élysée from 1995 to 2002.

As foreign minister from 2002 he led the international opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq in a celebrated speech to the UN Security Council. He moved to the interior ministry in 2004 and was prime minister from May 2005 to May 2007; his youth employment contract (CPE) set off mass protests in 2006 and was withdrawn. He never held elected office.

After leaving government he was tried over the Clearstream smear affair against Nicolas Sarkozy and acquitted in 2010 and on appeal in 2011. He returned to legal practice, left the UMP in 2010 to found République Solidaire, failed to qualify for the 2012 presidential race, and in 2025 launched a new party, Humanist France.