Guest Saturday morning in Europe, Alain Juppé, who was Prime Minister of Jacques Chirac from 1995 to 1997, paid tribute to the former President of the Republic, a year after his death.

He also publishes "Mon Chirac, une d'amitié singular" where he describes his career alongside Le Corrézien, from the 1970s.

INTERVIEW

He was one of his most faithful traveling companions.

Alain Juppé, who was Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997, signs

 Mon Chirac, a singular friendship

with the Tallandier editions.

Guest of Europe Morning Saturday, one year to the day after the disappearance of the former head of state, he evokes an extraordinary political course.

So that "no one can claim to be heir to Jacques Chirac today", considers Alain Juppé.

"The emotion, at the announcement of his death, reflected an adhesion, an empathy between the people of France and him," he explains.

A rare case in political history, according to the former mayor of Bordeaux: "Jacques Chirac had arrived to embody the father of the nation."

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"Our friendship is unique because, when we look at the last 20 or 30 years, it is rare for a President of the Republic and his Prime Minister to trust each other to the end", notes Alain Juppé, whom Jacques Chirac had described. of "best of us".

"Between Chirac and me the trust lasted, and even beyond his second term".

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Republican, humanist, European and "man of peace"

"He was a Republican very strongly attached to the values ​​of the Republic, to secularism. He hated racism and anti-Semitism," Alain Juppé still wants to recall.

"He was a humanist attached to the defense of the weakest. Let us remember his great laws on the disabled, the cancer plan or the establishment of the Samu social in Paris. And then he was a European, perhaps not out of passion, but of reason. He has done a lot to advance the euro, "adds the man who now sits on the Constitutional Council.

He also remembers the "man of peace" who took a stand against the Iraq war in 2003.