Of Armenian origins, Devedjian was a member first of the UMP then of the Republicains, he was appointed minister for financial emergency in 2008 by the then president Nicolas Sarkozy, a position he held for almost two years. He died in the hospital in Nanterre, where he had been hospitalized on Wednesday.
Diagnosed positive at Covid-19, Devedjian had been admitted for observation last Wednesday in a hospital in his department, just outside Paris. On Thursday he tweeted that he had been “struck by the epidemic” and “could therefore directly testify to the exceptional work of the doctors and all the health personnel”. “Tired but stabilized thanks to them, I go back down the slope – he wrote – and I thank them for the constant help to all the sick”.
A professional lawyer, Devedjian was elected to Parliament in his department from 1986 to 2017, then was mayor of Antony from 1983 to 2002 and departmental councilor from 2004, president of the Department since 2007. He was spokesman for the RPR, the neo-Gaullist party, from 1999 to 2001 and secretary general of the same party (when he became UMP) from 2007 to 2008. Under the presidency of Jacques Chirac he had been delegated minister of industry from 2004 to 2005, then with Sarkozy he was minister of the Relaunch Plan from 2008 to 2010.
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