Hollande, François Gérard Georges, 1954–, French lawyer and politician, president of France (2012–17), b. Rouen. He attended the elite National School of Administration (ENA) and Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). Joining the Socialist party in 1979, he was an economic adviser in President Mitterrand's administration. Hollande was elected to the National Assembly in 1988, served there until 1993, was reelected in 1997, and from then on served in the parliament. An affable and witty centrist, he was Socialist party leader from 1997 to 2008, and also was mayor of Tulle (2001–8) and council president of Corrèze dept. (2008–12). In 2011, after Dominique Strauss-Kahn did not run, Hollande won his party's presidential nomination. In 2012, in the runoff election, he defeated the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, and became France's first Socialist president since Mitterrand retired (1995). In office, he suffered politically when he shifted from a leftist to probusiness economic program and secured enactment of labor reforms. A series of significant terror attacks and a lackluster economy also caused his popularity to plunge, and in 2016 he decided not to run for a second term. Ségolène Royal, a prominent Socialist politician and the party's presidential candidate in 2007, was his partner for three decades.
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