During his presidency, Mitterrand was twice forced by the loss of a parliamentary majority into "cohabitation governments" with conservative cabinets led, respectively, by Jacques Chirac (1986–1988), and Édouard Balladur (1993–1995).

He had three brothers, Robert, Jacques (retired General and head of the French state aircraft company Aerospatiale), and Philippe, and four sisters, Antoinette, Marie-Josèphe, Colette, and Geneviève.

From mid-1942, he sent false papers to POWs in Germany[citation needed] and on 12 June and 15 August 1942, he joined meetings at the Château de Montmaur which formed the base of his future network for the resistance.

Mitterrand left the Commissariat in January 1943, when his boss Maurice Pinot [fr], another vichysto-résistant, was replaced by the collaborator André Masson, but he remained in charge of the centres d'entraides.

Pierre de Bénouville said, "François Mitterrand created a true spy network in the POW camps which gave us information, often decisive, about what was going on behind the German borders.

In May 1948, Mitterrand participated in the Congress of The Hague, together with Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, Paul-Henri Spaak, Albert Coppé and Altiero Spinelli.

This attitude may have been a factor in Mitterrand's losing his seat in the 1958 elections, beginning a long "crossing of the desert" (this term is usually applied to de Gaulle's decline in influence for a similar period).

Indeed, in the second round of the legislative election, François Mitterrand was supported by the Communists but the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) refused to withdraw its candidate.

He later said he had earlier been warned by right-wing deputy Robert Pesquet that he was the target of an Algérie française death squad and accused Prime Minister Michel Debré of being its instigator.

François Mitterrand was supported in the second round by the left and other anti-Gaullists: centrist Jean Monnet, moderate conservative Paul Reynaud and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, an extreme right-winger and the lawyer who had defended Raoul Salan, one of the four generals who had organized the 1961 Algiers putsch during the Algerian War.

While the Socialists took the leading position on the left, by obtaining more votes than the Communists for the first time since 1936, the leadership of François Mitterrand was challenged by an internal opposition led by Michel Rocard who criticized the programme of the PS as being "archaic" and "unrealistic".

[54] Major efforts were made to improve access to housing and health care, while the government also attempted to tackle working-class under-achievement in schools by reinforcing the comprehensive system, modernising the curriculum and reducing streaming.

After two years in office, Mitterrand made a substantial u-turn in economic policies, with the March 1983 adoption of the so-called "tournant de la rigueur" (austerity turn).

[55] In addition, a law on equal opportunities in employment was passed in July 1983 which prohibited all forms of unequal treatment regardless of the circumstances, together with providing for positive action plans to be established in major companies.

[64] That same year, a law was passed that gave the regional Caissess des Allocations Familiales the task of collecting unpaid alimony, initially for lone parents and subsequently for remarried or cohabiting mothers.

[66] Authorization was restored for a number of advanced undergraduate and graduate programmes which the previous centre-right minister Alice Saunier-Seité had rejected on grounds of economy and "rationalization" of resources.

A Fonds Regional des Acquisitions was established to assist provincial museums in the purchase of works of art, while the state actively continued an existing policy of encouraging bequests in lieu of death duties.

In terms of foreign policy, Mitterrand did not significantly deviate from his predecessors and he continued nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific in spite of protests from various peace and environmentalist organizations.

In 1985, French agents sank the Greenpeace-owned ex-trawler Rainbow Warrior while it was docked in Auckland, New Zealand which the group had used in demonstrations against nuclear tests, whaling, and seal hunting.

[94] Despite Mitterrand's left-wing affiliations, the 1980s saw France becoming more distant from the USSR, especially following events such as the expulsion of 47 Soviet diplomats and their families from the country in 1982 after they were accused of large-scale industrial and military espionage.

When François Mitterrand visited the USSR in November 1988, the Soviet media claimed to be 'leaving aside the virtually wasted decade and losing the Soviet-French 'special relationship' of the Gaullist era'.

All in all, François Mitterrand's La Baule speech, which marked a relative turning point in France's policy concerning its former colonies, has been compared with the 1956 loi-cadre Defferre which was responding to anti-colonialist feelings.

[104] The controversy surrounding the discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was intense after American researcher Robert Gallo and French scientist Luc Montagnier both claimed to have discovered it.

The controversy was eventually settled by an agreement (helped along by the mediation of Dr Jonas Salk) between President Ronald Reagan and François Mitterrand which gave equal credit to both men and their teams.

[107] A few days before his death, he was joined by family members and close friends for a "last meal" that attracted controversy because, in addition to other gourmet dishes, it included the serving of roast ortolan bunting, a small wild songbird that is a protected species whose sale was and remains illegal in France.

[110] A requiem mass was held at Notre-Dame cathedral, celebrated by Cardinal Lustiger in the presence of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, EU President Jacques Santer and representatives from 171 countries.

Although the minutes proved a direct link between Urba and corrupt payments to politicians, an edict from the office of François Mitterrand (even though he himself was listed as a recipient) prevented further investigation.

This was an unusual set-up since such law enforcement missions against terrorism are normally left to the National Police and Gendarmerie, run under the cabinet and the Prime Minister, and under the supervision of the judiciary.

Three thousand conversations concerning 150 people (7 for reasons judged to be contestable by the ensuing court process) were recorded between January 1983 and March 1986 by this anti-terrorist cell at the Elysée Palace.

[citation needed] On 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace vessel, was in New Zealand preparing to protest against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific when two explosions sank the ship, resulting in the death of freelance photographer Fernando Pereira.