Ségolène Royal (born Marie-Ségolène Royal, French pronunciation: [maʁi seɡɔlɛn ʁwajal]; 22 September 1953) is a French politician. A member of the Socialist Party, she participated in the 2007 French presidential election but lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round.
Royal was president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council from 2004 to 2014. She won the 2006 Socialist Party primary, becoming the first woman in France to be nominated as a presidential candidate by a major party. In the subsequent 2007 presidential election, she earned further distinction as the first woman to qualify for the second round of a presidential election, but ultimately lost to Sarkozy.
In 2008, Royal narrowly lost to Martine Aubry in the Socialist Party's election for First Secretary at the Party's twenty-second national congress. She lost the Socialist Party presidential primary in 2011, and failed in an attempt to win a seat in the National Assembly in the June 2012 parliamentary elections.
She has four children with François Hollande, her former domestic partner and Sarkozy's successor as president, and was appointed by him to the vice-chair directorship of the Banque Publique d'Investissement (BPI) in 2013. She served as Minister for Ecology from 2014 to 2017, in the Valls, then Cazeneuve cabinets.
Marie-Ségolène Royal was born on 22 September 1953 in the military base of Ouakam, Dakar, French West Africa (now Senegal), the daughter of Hélène Dehaye and Jacques Royal, a former artillery officer and aide to the mayor of Chamagne (Vosges). Her parents had eight children in nine years: Marie-Odette, Marie-Nicole, Gérard, Marie-Ségolène, Antoine, Paul, Henri and Sigisbert.
After secondary school in the small town of Melle, Deux-Sèvres, Marie-Ségolène attended a local university where she graduated 2nd in her class with a degree in economics. Her eldest sister then suggested she prepare the entrance exam to the elite Institut d'études politiques de Paris popularly called Sciences Po, which she attended on scholarship. There she discovered politics of class and feminism ("Sciences Po" at the time was 85% upper-class Parisian, mostly male).
In 1972, at the age of 19, Royal sued her father because he refused to divorce her mother and pay alimony and child support to finance the children's education. She won the case after many years in court, shortly before Jacques Royal died of lung cancer in 1981. Six of the eight children had refused to see him again, Ségolène included.
Royal, like the majority of France's political elite, is a graduate of the École nationale d'administration. She was in the same class as her former partner of 30 years, François Hollande, as well as Dominique de Villepin (prime minister under Jacques Chirac). Each class year at the ENA receives a nickname to distinguish it: Royal tried to get her peers to name their class after Louise Michel, a revolutionary from the 1870s, but they chose the name "Voltaire" instead. During her time at the ENA, Royal also dropped "Marie" from her hyphenated first name.
After graduating in 1980, she elected to serve as a judge (conseiller) of an administrative court before she was noticed by President François Mitterrand's special adviser Jacques Attali and recruited to his staff in 1982. She held the junior rank of chargée de mission from 1982 to 1988.
Member of the French National Assembly
She decided to become a candidate for the 1988 legislative election; she registered in the rural, Western Deux-Sèvres Département. Her candidacy was an example of the French political tradition of parachutage (parachuting), appointing promising "Parisian" political staffers as candidates in provincial districts to test their mettle. She was up against an entrenched UDF incumbent, and Mitterrand is said to have told her: "You will not win, but you will next time." Straddling strongly Catholic and Protestant areas, that district had been held by conservatives since World War II.
She did win against the odds, and remarked: "Pour un parachutage, l'atterrissage est réussi." ("As far as parachuting goes, the landing was a success").
After this election, she served as representative in the National Assembly for the Deux-Sèvres' 2nd constituency (1988–1992, 1993–1997, 2002–2007).
Minister of Environment: 1992–1993.
Minister of School Education: 1997–2000.
Minister of Family and Children: 2000–2001.
Minister of Family, Children and Disabled persons: 2001–2002.
President of the Region Poitou-Charentes