Roland Dumas (; 23 August 1922 – 3 July 2024) was a French lawyer and Socialist politician who served as Foreign Minister under President François Mitterrand from 1984 to 1986 and from 1988 to 1993. He was also President of the Constitutional Council from 1995 to 2000.
As a journalist and lawyer, he defended Jean Mons, Secretary-General of the Defence Committee, from charges of negligence in a case where Mons's assistant was accused of passing secrets of national security to communists. Because of this, he became close to François Mitterrand, president of the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR) party, himself suspected in the same scandal.
When President Mitterrand appointed Laurent Fabius as Prime Minister in July 1984, Dumas joined the cabinet as Minister of European Affairs. Five months later, he replaced Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson. He remained in this position until the Socialist defeat in the March 1986 legislative election. Nevertheless, he returned to the Quai d'Orsay after the re-election of Mitterrand in May 1988, until the PS defeat in the March 1993 legislative elections. He was the French Foreign Minister during the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, the Gulf War, and the negotiations of the Maastricht Treaty.
After losing reelection to the French National Assembly in 1993, he was nominated for President of the Constitutional Council in 1995. Under his presidency, the body argued in favour of complete judicial immunity for the French President.
Dumas was a member of the Emergency Committee for Iraq.
In June 2013, during an appearance on the French news channel La Chaîne parlementaire, Dumas claimed that British officials had been preparing for intervention in Syria two years before the start of the Arab Spring. "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business," he said. "I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organising an invasion of rebels into Syria."
Dumas' conviction for criticising a public prosecutor in his book was found unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010, by five votes to two.
In May 2007, Dumas received a 12-month jail sentence (suspended) for funds he mis-appropriated acting as executor of the will of the widow of Alberto Giacometti.
Governmental functions
Minister for European Affairs : 1983–1984.
Minister of External Relations : 1984–1986.
Government spokesman : June–December 1984.
Minister of Foreign Affairs : 1988–1993.
Electoral mandates
National Assembly of France
Member of the National Assembly of France for Haute-Vienne : 1956–1958. Elected in 1956.
Member of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze : 1967–1968. Elected in 1967.
Member of the National Assembly of France for Dordogne : 1981–1983 (Became minister in 1983) / 1986–1988 (Became minister in 1988). Elected in 1981, reelected in 1986, 1988.
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