Didier Parakian (born 5 March 1964) is a French businessman and politician. He made his fortune from ready-to-wear clothing. He was elected to Marseille city council in 2008 and became a deputy in the National Assembly in 2023.
Parakian was born in Marseille. His Armenian grandparents migrated to France in 1920 from the Turkish cities of Bursa and Kütahya. [1]
Parakian set up an eponymous fashion brand with his sister Marjorie. He sold the majority of the shares to the Thomas family in 2015. [2] The following year, an unsuccessful attempt at becoming more upmarket led to the company going into receivership. [3] In March 2017, the company was rescued by Chinese corporation Zhejiang Dunnu. [4]
In 2008, Parakian was elected to the city council. He became a deputy to right-wing mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin. [5]
In July 2020, Parakian was appointed to the council of the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis and named in the executive led by Martine Vassal. [6] He was put in charge of European funds. [7]
Formerly a member of The Republicans (LR), Parakian ran for Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance in the 2022 French legislative election, as the substitute for Sabrina Agresti-Roubache's candidacy in Bouches-du-Rhône's 1st constituency. [8] In July 2023, Agresti-Roubache was nominated for a ministerial post, and Parakian succeeded her as a deputy in the National Assembly. [9]
Bouches-du-Rhône is a department in southern France. It borders Vaucluse to the north, Gard to the west and Var to the east. The Mediterranean Sea lies to the south. Its prefecture and largest city is Marseille; other important cities include Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Martigues and Aubagne.
The Urban Community of Marseille Provence Métropole is a former intercommunal structure gathering the city of Marseille and some of its suburbs. It was established on 7 July 2000. On 1 January 2016 it merged into the Metropolis of Aix-Marseille-Provence.
Martine Louise Marie Aubry is a French politician. She was the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from November 2008 to April 2012, and has been the Mayor of Lille (Nord) since March 2001; she is also the first woman to hold this position. Her father, Jacques Delors, served as Minister of Finance under President François Mitterrand and was also President of the European Commission.
Jean-Claude Gaudin was a French politician for The Republicans. He served as the Mayor of Marseille from 1995 to 2020.
Jean-Marc Germain is a French politician, member of the Socialist Party. He is the cabinet director of Martine Aubry in Socialist Party. Germain is also the husband of Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris.
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is a French politician who has been President of France since 2017. Macron is ex officio one of the two Co-Princes of Andorra. He previously was Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs under President François Hollande from 2014 to 2016 and Deputy Secretary-General to the President from 2012 to 2014. He is a founding member of Renaissance, a liberal and centrist political party.
The Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis is the métropole, an intercommunal structure, centred on the cities of Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. It is located in the Bouches-du-Rhône, Var and Vaucluse departments, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, southeastern France. It was created in January 2016, replacing the previous Communauté urbaine Marseille Provence Métropole and five communautés d'agglomération. Its area is 3149.2 km2. Its population was 1,889,666 in 2018, of which 868,277 in Marseille proper and 143,097 in Aix-en-Provence.
Legislative elections were held in France on 11 and 18 June 2017 to elect the 577 members of the 15th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. They followed the two-round presidential election won by Emmanuel Macron. The centrist party he founded in 2016, La République En Marche! (LREM), led an alliance with the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem); together, the two parties won 350 of the 577 seats—a substantial majority—in the National Assembly, including an outright majority of 308 seats for LREM. The Socialist Party (PS) was reduced to 30 seats and the Republicans (LR) reduced to 112 seats, and both parties' allies also suffered from a marked drop in support; these were the lowest-ever scores for the centre-left and centre-right in the legislative elections. The movement founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, la France Insoumise (FI), secured 17 seats, enough for a group in the National Assembly. Among other major parties, the French Communist Party (PCF) secured ten and the National Front (FN) obtained eight seats. Both rounds of the legislative election were marked by record low turnout.
Renaissance (RE) is a liberal and centrist political party in France. The party was originally known as En Marche ! and later La République En Marche !, before adopting its current name in September 2022.
Christophe Castaner is a French politician who served as Minister of the Interior from 16 October 2018 to 6 July 2020 under President Emmanuel Macron. He had been elected in 2017 for a three-year term as chairman of the La République En Marche! party with Macron's support. Castaner was Government Spokesperson under Prime Minister Édouard Philippe in 2017 and Secretary of State for Relations with Parliament from 2017 to 2018. He was also Macron's 2017 presidential campaign spokesman.
Presidential elections were held in France on 10 and 24 April 2022. As no candidate won a majority in the first round, a runoff was held, in which Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen and was re-elected as President of France. Macron, from La République En Marche! (LREM), had defeated Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, once already in the 2017 French presidential election, for the term which expired on 13 May 2022. Macron became the first president of France to win a re-election bid since Jacques Chirac won in 2002.
Stéphane Travert is a French politician who has served as member of the National Assembly for Manche's 3rd constituency since 2018 and previously from 2012 to 2017.
Legislative elections were held in France on 12 and 19 June 2022 to elect the 577 members of the 16th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. The elections took place following the 2022 French presidential election, which was held in April 2022. They have been described as the most indecisive legislative elections since the establishment of the five-year presidential term in 2000 and subsequent change of the electoral calendar in 2002. The governing Ensemble coalition remained the largest bloc in the National Assembly but substantially lost its ruling majority, resulting in the formation of France's first minority government since 1993.
Martine Vassal is a French politician who has presided over the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis since 2018. A member of The Republicans (LR), she succeeded Jean-Claude Gaudin in office, who resigned to focus on his term as Mayor of Marseille.
Together is a liberal political coalition in France. Formed in November 2021 as Ensemble Citoyens, it includes Renaissance, Democratic Movement (MoDem), Horizons, En commun, and the Progressive Federation. The coalition included the parties Agir and Territories of Progress (TDP) until they were merged into the rebranded Renaissance. Ensemble has mainly been described as being centrist, and sometimes as centre-right on the political spectrum.
Events in the year 2022 in France.
The New Ecological and Social People's Union was a left-wing electoral alliance of political parties in France. Formed on May Day 2022, the alliance includes La France Insoumise (LFI), the Socialist Party (PS), the French Communist Party (PCF), The Ecologists (LE), Ensemble! (E!), and Génération.s (G.s), and their respective smaller partners. It was the first wide left-wing political alliance since the Plural Left in the 1997 French legislative election. Over 70 dissident candidates who refused the accord still ran.
The Borne government was the forty-third government of the French Fifth Republic, formed on 16 May 2022 and headed by Élisabeth Borne as Prime Minister under President Emmanuel Macron. It served as a caretaker government until 9 January 2024 when Gabriel Attal was appointed Prime Minister by Macron.
Olivier Klein is a French politician who served as Minister Delegate of Cities and Housing in the government of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne from 2022 to 2023.
Sabrina Agresti-Roubache is a French film producer and politician of LREM who has been serving as Secretary of Citizenship and Urban Development in the government of successive Prime Ministers Élisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal since 2023. She previously was a member of the National Assembly from 2022 to 2023, representing Bouches-du-Rhône's 1st constituency.