Word: matignon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They may both belong to France's conservative party, but President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Minister Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin could not be more different. Tall, elegant, and ostentatiously erudite, Villepin was a career diplomat who gained the Matignon without ever having run for office. Short, petulant and sparking with excessive energy, Sarkozy marched to the Elysée Palace by winning an election, using old-fashioned political grunt work and his Cabinet posts to establish a reputation for delivering results. Along the way, the two men's conflicting styles and rival aspirations turned them into bitter enemies...
...often proved itself impervious to reform, fierce opposition like that means Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin must be doing something right. He certainly thinks so. "What we've done is enormous! Enormous!" Raffarin exclaimed in an interview with Time at his office in the Hôtel Matignon in Paris' seventh arrondissement. But, he added, "We have to be attentive to the nervous nature of French society." How nervous is France? Right now Raffarin's approval rating is 38%, the lowest point of his 16-month tenure, down from a high of 63% last December. So you might expect...