H.E.Segolene Royal

Ségolène Royal (French: [se.??.l?n ?wa.jal] ( listen); born 22 September 1953) is a French politician, who was the Socialist Party candidate for the Presidency of France in the 2007 election. Royal was president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council from 2004 to 2014. She won the 2006 Socialist Party primary, becoming the first woman in France to be nominated as a presidential candidate by a major party. In the subsequent 2007 presidential election, she earned further distinction as the first woman to qualify for the second round of a presidential election, but ultimately lost to Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2008, Royal narrowly lost to Martine Aubry in the Socialist Party's election for First Secretary at the Party's twenty-second national congress. She lost the Socialist Party presidential primary in 2011, and failed in an attempt to win a seat in the National Assembly in the June 2012 parliamentary elections. François Hollande, the former president, is the father of her four children. She was appointed by him to the vice-chair directorship of the Banque Publique d'Investissement (BPI) in 2013. She served as Minister for Ecology from 2014 to 2017, in the Valls, then Cazeneuve cabinets.