Christophe Béchu (born 11 June 1974 in Angers, Maine-et-Loire) is a French politician, President of the General Council of the Maine-et-Loire department since 2004 and Member of the European Parliament elected in the 2009 European election to 2011 for the West France constituency. A former member of DL, he is now a member of the leading centre-right Union for a Popular Movement.

He has represented the Canton of Angers-Nord-Ouest since 2001, and was re-elected there during the French cantonal elections, 2008. However, he was narrowly defeated by the incumbent PS mayor of Angers, Jean-Claude Antonini, in the 2008 municipal elections.

In 2009, the UMP selected him to lead the UMP list in the West constituency ahead of the 2009 European elections. He was elected to the European Parliament as a result. His list won 27.16% of the vote and three MEPs. He resigned in January 2011. He losted the regional election of 2010 to become president of Pays-de-la-Loire region, but was elected regional councillor. In September 2011, he was elected senator of Maine-et-Loire, he resigns from regional council of Pays-de-Loire.

François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ɔlɑ̃d]; born 12 August 1954) is the 24th President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He previously served as the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008 and as a Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze's 1st Constituency from 1988 to 1993 and then again from 1997 to 2012. He also served as the Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008 and the President of the General Council of Corrèze from 2008 to 2012.

He was elected President of France on 6 May 2012, defeating the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, and was inaugurated on 15 May. He is the second Socialist President of the Fifth French Republic, after François Mitterrand who served from 1981 to 1995.

Hollande was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy, to a middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert (1927–2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who "had once run for the extreme right in local politics." The surname "Hollande" is "believed to come from Calvinist ancestors who escaped Holland (the Netherlands) in the 16th century and took the name of their old country." Hollande was raised Catholic but quietly rebelled against the strict religious brothers chosen by his father to educate him. The family moved to Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, when Hollande was 13.