François Fillon

François Charles Armand Fillon (born 4 March 1954) is a French retired politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 2007 to 2012 under President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was the nominee of the Republicans (previously known as the Union for a Popular Movement), the country's largest centre-right political party, for the 2017 presidential election where he ranked third in the first round of voting. Fillon became Jean-Pierre Raffarin's Minister of Labour in 2002 and undertook controversial reforms of the 35-hour working week law and of the French retirement system. In 2004, as Minister of National Education he proposed the much debated Fillon law on Education.