Rachida Dati
Article
Rachida Dati
Dati in 2016
Minister of Culture
Incumbent
Assumed office
11 January 2024
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal
Preceded by Rima Abdul Malak
Member of the European Parliament
In office
14 July 2009 – 1 July 2019
Constituency Île-de-France
Minister of Justice
In office
18 May 2007 – 23 June 2009
Prime Minister François Fillon
Preceded by Pascal Clément
Succeeded by Michèle Alliot-Marie
Mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris
Incumbent
Assumed office
29 March 2008
Preceded by Michel Dumont
Councilor of Paris
Incumbent
Assumed office
21 March 2008
Constituency 7th arrondissement
Personal details
Born 27 November 1965 (age 58)
Saint-Rémy, France
Citizenship
FranceMorocco
[1]
Political party The Republicans (2015–2024)
Other political
affiliations Union for a Popular Movement (2006–2015)
Spouse unknown
(m. 1992; ann. 1995)
Children 1
Education University of Burgundy (MAEs)
Panthéon-Assas University (LLB)
Occupation Magistrate
Rachida Dati (French pronunciation: [ʁaʃida dati]; born 27 November 1965) is a French politician and former magistrate who has served as Minister of Culture in the Attal government since 2024.
Dati served as Minister of Justice from 2007 to 2009 under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A member of The Republicans (LR), she also served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2009 to 2019, representing Île-de-France. Dati was a spokesperson for Sarkozy during his 2007 presidential campaign. Following his victory, Sarkozy appointed her to the Government.
She was elected to the mayorship of the 7th arrondissement of Paris in 2008 when she also entered the Council of Paris. In the 2020 Paris municipal election, she unsuccessfully ran for Mayor of Paris against incumbent Anne Hidalgo.
Following the election, she was installed as opposition leader in the Council of Paris.
Early life and education
Rachida Dati (Arabic: رشيدة داتي) was born on 27 November 1965 in Saint-Rémy, Burgundy, to a Moroccan father, a bricklayer named M'Barek Dati (1934–2017), and an Algerian mother, named Fatima-Zohra (died in 2001).
She was the second child of eleven in an impoverished family (seven girls and four boys, including Jamal and Omar, both convicted of drug trafficking, and Malika, elected to Nancy).
She spent her childhood in Chalon-sur-Saône.[2]
Even though Dati was raised in a devout Islamic environment, she attended Catholic schools; Dati's own personal religious beliefs have been described as "unclear".[3]
When asked about her North African origins, she stated she saw herself first and foremost as a "daughter of France".[4]
Dati studied at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, where she received a master's degree in Economics, as well as at Panthéon-Assas University in Paris, where she later received a law degree.[5]
Early career
At the age of sixteen, Dati started working as a paramedical assistant. She then worked for three years as an accountant at Elf Aquitaine while at university.
After meeting Jean-Luc Lagardère in 1990, Dati entered the audit management team of Matra Nortel Communication. She spent a year in London at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, in the records management and archiving department.
In 1994, she was an auditing supervisor and secretary-general of the Bureau of Urban Development Studies at Suez (then Lyonnaise des Eaux). From 1995 to 1997, she worked as a technical advisor at the legal management division of the Ministry of Education. In 1997, Dati was admitted to the École Nationale de la magistrature, a public educational institution that offers courses necessary to become a magistrate.
Upon leaving in 1999, she became a legal auditor at the Bobigny tribunal de grande instance (high court). She went on to become a judge for collective procedures[6] at the tribunal de grande instance in Péronne and eventually an assistant to the attorney general of the Évry tribunal.
Career in politics
In 2002, Dati became Nicolas Sarkozy's advisor, working for him on an anti-delinquency project. 2006 she joined the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party. On 14 January 2007, she was named spokesperson for Sarkozy on the day he was chosen as UMP candidate for the presidential elections of April 2007.
Minister of Justice, 2007–2009
After Sarkozy's victory on 6 May 2007, she was appointed Minister of Justice, making her the first political figure born to North African immigrant parents to occupy a sovereign ministry in a French government.
Her rationalization of the court system was publicly opposed by judicial professionals.[7] Later on, it was recognized by the French Court of Auditors as one of the most ambitious reforms of the judicial institution.[8]
When the Sarkozys' marriage began to break up, Dati frequently went on official presidential trips to accompany Nicolas Sarkozy.[9]
On 23 January 2009, Sarkozy announced that Dati would take the second position on the UMP candidate list for the Île-de-France constituency in the European Parliament election in June 2009, to which she was elected.[10]
She left her post as minister after being elected as a Member of the European Parliament.
Soon after she left the government, in the summer of 2009, Dati switched to law, becoming a junior magistrate and assistant prosecutor.[11] She also founded a consulting company called "La Bourdonnais Consultant,"[12] which she had to dissolve at the beginning of 2010 to be able to resume the profession of lawyer, which she had to do by special dispensation (like other former magistrates).
[13]
She sits on the editorial board of the French version of the Huffington Post, where she writes a weekly column about women's issues.[14]
Member of the European Parliament, 2009–2019
A member of the European People's Party group in the European Parliament,[15] Dati served on the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs and the parliament's delegations for relations with the Mashreq countries, to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean, and for relations with the Arab Peninsula.
In parliament, Dati was the Parliament's rapporteur on several texts dealing with countering terrorism and the prevention of radicalization and recruitment of European citizens by terrorist organizations.[16] Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015, she drafted a report on how to prevent the radicalization of young Europeans.[17]
Her parliamentary work also included dealing with the prison systems and conditions in the European Union and finding solutions to face the migration crisis with an EU common list of safe countries of origin.[18]
In the UMP's 2012 leadership election, Dati endorsed Jean-François Copé.[19]
In the Republicans’ 2017 leadership election, Dati endorsed Laurent Wauquiez.[20]
Career in local politics
On the local level, Dati has been serving as Mayor of the 7th district of Paris and a member of the Council of Paris.[21] On 9 February 2013, Dati announced she was a candidate for mayor of Paris in the 2014 local elections but she later withdrew because "the press has already chosen Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet".
In early 2019, Dati announced her plan to run again for the Paris municipal election in 2020.[22] Since 2020, she has been chairing her party's group in the Council of Paris.[23]
Minister of Culture (since 2024)
On 11 January 2024, Dati made a surprise comeback to national politics, being nominated as Minister of Culture in the government of Gabriel Attal. As a consequence, Les Républicains President Éric Ciotti announced her exclusion from the party.[24]
Controversy
In early 2009, Dati received an anonymous death threat accompanied by a 9 mm-calibre bullet.[25]
Soon after Dati left the government in 2009 to stand for the European Parliament, she was hired by the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance as a legal advisor.[26] In 2019, France's financial prosecutor launched an investigation into consulting fees she received from the alliance.[27]
In December 2013, French media reported that Dati had received payments from French energy utility GDF-Suez. In early 2014, the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz asked parliamentary services to look into conflict-of-interest concerns, but the inquiry was interrupted by the 2014 election campaign. At the same time, the French Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique, France's anti-corruption watchdog, also opened a file on the case.[28]
In August 2021, Dati was charged by France's financial crime unit with passive corruption and benefiting from abuse of power.[29] On 27 September 2021, Arte reported how caviar diplomacy led to the rejection of a report on Azerbaijani political prisoners by the European Parliament in 2013.
The claim was made that the rejection was due to bribery of EU parliamentarians; Dati stood out as one of the leading voices to reject the report about the state of democracy in Azerbaijan. Her Italian colleague Luca Volontè was sentenced for accepting bribes. Volontè received 2.4 million euros as bribes from a 30 million bribe fund of the Azerbaijani fund to thwart EU guidelines by bribing its institutions.[30][31]
Other activities
PlaNet Finance, Member of International Advisory Board
Personal life
In November 1992, Rachida Dati married a man “with whom she had nothing to share”, in her words, to put an end to the “recurring pressures” from her family, what she describes as a “forced marriage”. The following month, she requested the annulment of this union, which was pronounced in 1995.[32]
In September 2008, Dati announced that she was pregnant and would be a single mother. She revealed her pregnancy to a group of reporters who questioned her about mounting rumors. "I want to remain careful, because (...) I am still in a risk area. I am 42", she was quoted as saying.[33]
Her daughter, Zohra, was born in January 2009. As the father's name was not revealed, many names circulated in gossip magazines.[34]
However, in 2012, she started legal action against Dominique Desseigne, the chief executive of Groupe Lucien Barrière, a casino market leader in France, Switzerland, and Europe, to establish the paternity of her child.[35][36]
In December 2012, a French court ordered Desseigne to undergo a paternity test to see if he fathered Dati's child.[37] After Desseigne refused to undergo the test, a French court decision of 7 January 2016 ruled that Desseigne was indeed the father.[38]
In November 2016, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women, having "blazed a trail for Muslim women and minorities in France".[39]
Distinctions
Morocco: Grand Officer of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite (April 2010)[40]
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Two Sicilian Royal Family: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Francis I[41]
References
FRANCE - MAROC. Un juge marocain contre Rachida Dati, www.courrierinternational.com, 3 October 2012.
(in French) "Municipales 2020 : la Chalonnaise Rachida Dati investie à Paris par Les Républicains", france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr, 7 November 2019.
