Corrections : Statement by Jacques Chirac at the National Assembly on April 9, 1986

Bac history in ES and L 2013: two corrected documents. Here is the correction for document n°2, a statement by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac.

Document n° 2: Statement by Jacques Chirac

Document n° 2: General policy statement by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac before the National Assembly, April 9, 1986. The RPR, Gaullist Party, won the legislative elections of 1986. Jacques Chirac, a member of the RPR, was then appointed Prime Minister by President François Mitterrand. “For decades – some would even say centuries – the for decades – some would even say centuries – the French temptation par excellence has been that of State dirigisme. Whether it be the economy or education, culture or research, new culture or research, new technologies or environmental protection, it is always to the State that the citizen has turned to ask for ideas and subsidies (1). Little by little, and administered, and even collectivized, society has been built administered, and even collectivized (2), where power was concentrated in the hands of experts trained in the management of large organizations. This system of government, which is at the same time a social model, is not without it flatters our national taste for equality; it ensures and stability to the social body; it is perfectly compatible with the need for security with the need for security that is embodied in the welfare state. But it has but it has two crippling defects (3): it destroys itself, by obesity (4); and above all, it threatens to undermine individual freedoms. The French have understood the dangers of state dirigisme and do not want it anymore. By one of those paradoxes of which history has the secret, it is precisely at the moment when socialization seemed to triumph that the need for that the need for personal autonomy, nourished by the rise of the level of culture and education, expresses itself with the most force. This is the source of the tensions that have plagued our society for years: increased collectivization (2) of daily life but, conversely search for a new balance between the demands of justice for all and the end of the aspiration to more freedom for each individual.
Source: Serge Bernstein, le gaullisme, documentation photographique n° 8050, 2006. (1) Subsidy: financial aid
(2) Collectivized, collectivization: references to the Soviet model, used as an argument in the political debate
(3) Redhibitory: unacceptable
(4) Idea that dirigisme would increase the weight of the state and make it less effective

correction of document n° 2 Statement by Jacques Chirac

On March 16, 1986, the legislative elections took place: proportional ballot, departmental elections.
The RPR and the UDF won 286 of the 577 seats.
It was a new situation: a first cohabitation is born at this moment, also called coexistence.
Jacques Chirac responded to the President of the Republic in this speech. Here is what the site of the national assembly:
“President François Mitterrand then calls Jacques Chirac to form a government. While the latter comes to ask for the confidence of the deputies, the debate starts between the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister in order to define the distribution of competences between the Head of State. The Head of State and the Head of Government in a political situation.

Jacques Chirac’s inaugural address to the National Assembly is a response to the message of the President of the Republic. Entering cohabitation, he drew up an assessment of the previous governments and pointed to the “movement of hope” that France was experiencing.

Faced with a politically weakened President of the Republic, the new Prime Minister wanted to bring people together: “We are not talking to this or that we are not talking to this or that fraction of the people, but to the entire people of France,” he declared before the parliamentarians.

The opposition, through the voice of the speakers of the Socialist and Front National-RN groups set the date for future confrontations between the two heads of heads of the executive.


→ All the correction to the history exam —geography 2013