Pierre Lellouche

After working for the Iranian Atomic Agency[5] and before joining the administration of the IRIS, directed by Pascal Boniface, he joined the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) from 1979 to 1988 where he dealt with political and strategic issues and became deputy editor of the magazine Politique étrangère.[6]

Lellouche was a member of the National Assembly of France, first for Val d'Oise's 8th constituency (1993-1997) and later for Paris' 4th constituency (1997-2009). In parliament, Lellouche served on the Defense Committee (1993-1994, 1997–2002) and the Committee on Foreign Affairs (1995-1997, 2002–2007).[7] In addition to his committee assignments, he was a member of the French delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly from 1997 until 2009; he served as the Assembly's president from November 2004 to 17 November 2006.

From 2002, Lellouche was also a member of "The Reformers" within the UMP group, which advocated deep reform of the administration and liberalization of the economy. He also became widely known for the 2003 Lellouche law outlawing discrimination based on a variety of immutable characteristics, including national origin. This law has been described by Haaretz as "among the world's most potent tools to fight the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement."[8][9]

Following the 2007 French legislative election, his political allies Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon supported Lellouche as candidate for the chairmanship of the National Assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs or the Defence Committee, but this was eventually vetoed by the chairman of the UMP's parliamentary group, Jean-François Copé.[10]

On the local level, Lellouche was also a municipal councillor of Cannes (1995-2001) and a councillor of Paris (since 2001; reelected in 2008).

In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed Lellouche as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[11] In this capacity, he worked with his counterparts from the US (Richard Holbrooke), Germany (Bernd Mützelburg) and the UK (Sherard Cowper-Coles).[12]

Governmental functions

• Secretary of State for Foreign Trade: 2010-2012
• Secretary of State for European Affairs: 2009-2010

As State Secretary for European Affairs, Lellouche was involved in the negotiations on the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in 2010.[13] In response to the 2010 Russian wildfires, he told Le Figaro that the EU should pool assets to create a European emergency force and build mutual assistance capabilities to deal with emergencies.[14]

Upon returning to parliament, Lellouche served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs again from 2012 until 2017.[7] In this capacity, he joined François Fillon, Étienne Blanc, Éric Ciotti and Valérie Pécresse on an official trip to Iraq in September 2014.[15]

In 2016, Lellouche's call for the impeachment of President François Hollande for allegedly disclosing classified information to journalists,[16] was dismissed by a cross-party steering committee.[17]

Lellouche was also the French negotiator concerning the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in Cadarache.

Ahead of the Republicans' 2016 presidential primary, Lellouche endorsed François Fillon as the party's candidate for the 2017 French presidential election. Amid the Fillon affair, he resigned from the campaign team.[18] In an open letter, he also announced his plans to leave politics.[19]

Lellouche called the UK Conservative Party's policy on the EU "pathetic" and a kind of political autism,[21] claiming "They have essentially castrated your UK influence in the European parliament."[22]

Lellouche is considered to be a supporter of strong cooperation with the United States of America.[10]

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he explained Crimea would stay russian because no one will go to war for Ukrain[23] and asked in 2023 if it is not time to wonder about a way out of this war ?.[24]

Lellouche defended a traditional view of the family during the discussions concerning the Pacte civil de solidarité (PACS), a form of civil union, during which he mentioned some "homophobic" arguments according to several observers ("You just have to sterilize them!").[25][26] However, later on in 2003 he was in favour of a law introducing harsher punishments for abuses against homosexuals.

Lellouche is also a strong opponent of the solidarity tax on wealth (ISF) first voted under François Mitterrand.

In 2015, Lellouche opposed a parliamentary decision to create a $60-million fund to compensate Holocaust victims deported by French state rail firm SNCF to Nazi concentration camps in a move also intended to protect the company from future U.S. litigation.[27]

In response to the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks, Lellouche publicly opposed a bill proposed by Prime Minister Manuel Valls to let France's intelligence services deploy fly-on-the-wall spying devices more easily against suspected terrorists.[28]

In 2003, in the newspaper Libération, he declared there was "a new anti-Semitism, linked to the crisis in the Middle East and which appeared about twenty years ago.[29] In 2014, he voted against the resolution on the Palestinian State but protested "against the unbearable and unacceptable interference of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the vote of the French Parliament".[30] In 2015, he discovers having been monitored by the NSA.[31] In 2017, he reaffirms his position on “the necessary halt to the construction of new settlements”, but declares himself against a “strategy of one-upmanship against Israel”.[32]