Jacques Chirac's profile, Europe's longest-lived politician

For some years he suffered memory loss, which was said to be linked to a form of Alzheimer's disease or a minor blow he had suffered while in office.

Chirac, who was head of state from 1995 to 2007, has one of the longest political careers continuing in Europe, twice president, twice prime minister and 18 years as mayor of Paris.

Although his time as president was marked by inaction and political stagnation, and despite his leaving France just as divided and struggling with increased debt, inequalities and unemployment, as he had found, his public personality prompted him to embrace as one of the most popular French politicians.

Chirac will be remembered internationally for his strong opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the stance of anti-war French increased 90%.

“War is always a final solution. It's always evidence of failure. It is always the worst solution because it brings death and misery“, -- he said a week before US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq. He warned that any Iraqi occupation would witness a “macth”.

One of Chirac's biggest gestures at home was the reconciliation of the nation with its history, acknowledging that France as a whole was responsible for gathering about 76,000 Jews sent to Nazi death camps during World War II. His promise that “criminal seizure” of the German occupation “was helped by the French people, by the French state of”, set up the last tax of Vichy's occupation and collateral regime. His apology was the first time a head of state had fully recognized France's role during the war.

Chirac will be remembered above all as a master in the art of political appeal. For decades he fascinated the public with the handshakes, with handcuffs like the shakings of dog paws, on his tours across France, a beer-loving, cigarette drinker Gitanas, and a man who was able to eat five lunches at a afternoon during election campaigns.

He shook so many hands as he crossed across France that he dipped his fingers in an ice bucket at the end of the day or put bandages in order to protect himself from the hands of pensioners and farmers. He had an internal need to touch people, whether he was embracing an elderly voter or swearing to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's hand.

But Chirac, on the other hand, was ridiculed, satirized, and often known as “

Following a landmark trial in 2011, he became the first former president to be convicted of corruption following charges of embezzlement in a party funding scandal when he was mayor of Paris. However, he was seen incarnate the French president's role as the republican monarch with a kind of charm, which his descendants later, Nicolas Sarcozy and Francisco Hollande, according to the public, would be missing.

Politically, he was known for his ability to adapt to the wind. He was a state control champion in the 1970s and then attended Ronald Reagan's free market liberalisation in the 1980s. When he was elected president in 1995, he shocked the world by restarting the nuclear testing with the Athal bombings in the South Pacific, but then appeared on stage as an eco- forwarder at the Earth Summit in 2002, warning: “Our house is burning, while we look somewhere else”.

He overcame his stance from a strong Eurosceptic in the late 1970s to become a protector of the euro 10 years later.

During more than 43 years in politics, Chirac was named a “buldozer” and “assassin” of rivals.

Born in Paris by well - economic parents, but progressive, what really marked his personality was military service on the front line during the Algerian war. He was the last French president to have direct experience in the war, and that left him two, a fan of the military strategy and, meanwhile, as cautious about the war.

He was a figure in French political life since the early 1960s, starting as adviser to Prime Minister George Poppidou, becoming an MP in the rural Corrèze and then minister. Before becoming president in 1995, he founded a political party, the Gorist Group for the Republic, twice served as prime minister and failed twice in the presidential elections.

It was the ability to crash and rise again to confirm part of his charm.

When Chirac became president in 1995, he promised to heal “the social structure”, disabled unemployment, division and inequality that plagued France. But instead, the controversial pension reform of his government and the planned package of social security austerity measures led up to 2 million people to the streets, paralysing France in the worst strikes since May 1968. His mandate was questioned with his disastrous decision to call parliamentary elections in 1997 in an effort to boost his support. The Socialists won, forcing Chirac to accept the unpleasant division of power.

In 2002, he was re-elected president with 82% of the vote after Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front shocked the nation into the last runoff. Chirac won because many of the left-wing electorate voted for him in order to stop the far-right leader. He later said that establishing a mixed national unity government with ministers from all over the political side was not one of his greatest regrets. Instead, he managed to impose his centre-right policy. In 2002, he agreed to joint agricultural payment policies with Germany, securing once again its popularity.

At home, he was most criticised for failing to manage change in France, avoidance of reforms, and allow for increased inequality, symbolized by 2005 urban unrest over real estate across France. The same year he called a referendum on adopting the EU constitution, but later failed to sell the idea to the electorate, which voted “Jo”. It was a devastating blow. The popularity estimates at the end of his mandate were the lowest compared to any president since the war.

Among the success stories on the job was the struggle to improve road safety, which was estimated to have saved 8,500 lives in four years. He removed mandatory military service and reduced the presidential mandate from seven to five years.

He was a lifetime source of exciting blankets and stings, the most famous perhaps is the one about Margaret Thattcher: “What does that bag, my balls on a plate want? ”

He once said about Britain: “You can't trust people who cook that bad”. But he also made comments that he would regret. “Afrika is not ready for democracy,” he told a group of African leaders in the early 1990s. When mayor of Paris in 1991, he gave a controversial speech on immigration and spoke of French concerned by “urms and aromas“, causing outrage.

Like Francisco Mitterrand before him, Chirac wanted to leave behind a major cultural project and created the Paris Museum “Quai Branly”, a monument to himself on the river as the great “defender of African, Asian, American and other indigenous cultures.

Throughout his presidency, he was upset by numerous scandals related to the time he was mayor. He claimed immunity as president, but when he left office, he quickly became the first former president convicted of a crime. At 79 years of age, he was given a two-year prison sentence after being convicted of misappropriating public funds as mayor of Paris, to illegally finance the right-wing party.

His lawyer, Georges Kiejman, said at the time: “What I hope for is that this act of decision will in no way change the deep and legitimate love the French have for Jacques Chirac”.

It was a sign of Chirac's extraordinary life and fate that actually didn't happen.