Departures of note

Édouard Balladur was a French statesman and senior civil servant who served as Prime Minister of France from 29 March 1993 to 17 May 1995, during the second cohabitation under President François Mitterrand. Born in İzmir, Turkey, to a Levantine family of Armenian ancestry, he moved to Marseille as a child and later studied at Sciences Po and the École nationale d'administration before joining the Conseil d'État.

He entered politics in 1964 as an advisor to Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, later becoming secretary-general of the presidency under Pompidou. In 1986 he was appointed Minister of Economy, Finance and Privatisation in Jacques Chirac's cohabitation government, where he pursued a liberal economic policy of privatisations. As Prime Minister from 1993, he continued this reform agenda, overseeing privatisations and pension reform while managing the second cohabitation.

Balladur ran for president in the 1995 election, breaking a promise to support his longtime ally Jacques Chirac. Long the favourite in the polls, he finished third with 18.6% of the vote, ending his presidential ambitions and straining his relationship with Chirac. He later served as a deputy and chaired the National Assembly's foreign affairs committee, and headed institutional reform committees under Nicolas Sarkozy. He was acquitted in 2021 in the Karachi affair over alleged illegal campaign financing.