French ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, architect of 35-hour week, dies at 88

French former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who gave France its 35-hour work week and then withdrew from politics after leading France’s Socialist Party to an earth-shaking presidential election defeat against far-right firebrand Jean-Marie Le Pen, has died. He was 88.

His death was confirmed by the current prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, after the national news agency, Agence France-Presse, reported that Jospin died on Sunday (March 22), citing his family.

Lecornu said in a post on X that Jospin “served France with constancy, rigour and a sense of responsibility” and that “his actions, guided by a certain vision of social progress and republican values, leave a lasting mark and a model of commitment.” A tousle of white curls and thick-rimmed glasses gave Jospin the trappings of the economics professor he was before being unexpectedly named as head of the Socialist Party in 1981 by newly elected President Francois Mitterrand.
Untarnished by allegations of corruption, Jospin re-established credibility for the Socialists after bribery and fraud scandals led to their downfall in the 1993 parliamentary elections.

He became prime minister in 1997, holding the post until 2002, leading a broad left-wing government under French conservative President Jacques Chirac in a power-sharing arrangement dubbed “cohabitation”. As prime minister, Jospin resisted shifting the French left toward free-market reforms embraced at the same time in Britain.

He enacted France’s parity law, required political parties to field the same number of male and female candidates in national elections, installed civil unions for LGBTQ+ and straight couples and lowered the work week from 39 hours to 35 hours, hailed as a social breakthrough by supporters but criticised by opponents as a shackle for the economy.

Jospin never embraced his role as a public figure, hampered by a restrained personality that grew even stiffer in front of cameras.

He abandoned politics after his shocking loss to Le Pen in the first round of presidential voting in 2002.

The polarising Le Pen qualified for the second-round runoff against Chirac, the incumbent and first-round winner, by a whisker, relegating Jospin to third place. Le Pen and Jospin both got more than 16% of the vote, but Le Pen’s nearly 200,000-vote advantage over Jospin saw him advance to round two, in a triumph for the anti-immigration founder of the far-right National Front and a body blow for Le Pen’s opponents.

Determined to keep Le Pen out of the presidential Elysee Palace, voters rallied around Chirac in the runoff, who won a second term by a landslide.

Jospin was born July 12, 1937, the son of a midwife who, according to family lore, used the works of Voltaire to raise her pelvis while she was in labour.

“She believed I would have the spirit of Voltaire,” he said.

Jospin said his childhood memories of Nazi-occupied Paris tinged his outlook into adulthood.

“I have the memory of the importance of silence. If you weren’t quiet, you ran the risk of putting people in danger. Certainly in political life I’ve retained a certain horror of talkativeness,” he said.

He grew up in a Protestant family and attended the prestigious Ecole d’Administration Nationale, alma mater to a disproportionate share of French leaders and intellectuals.

Like many people in Paris and beyond, he got caught up in the left-wing protests of 1968. He was close to Trotskyists before joining the Socialist Party.

Despite mellowing over time, Jospin never lost his wariness of the free market, keeping his trademark phrase: “Yes to the market economy, no to a market society.”