Antoine Pinay

Antoine Pinay
Antoine Pinay at the Geneva Summit (1955)
90th Prime Minister of France
In office 8 March 1952 – 8 January 1953
Preceded by	Edgar Faure
Succeeded by	René Mayer
Personal details
Born	30 December 1891 Saint-Symphorien-sur-Coise, Rhône, France
Died	13 December 1994(1994-12-13) (aged 102) Saint-Chamond, Loire, France
Political party	Democratic Alliance (1936-1938) Democratic and Radical Union (1938-1940) Independent Radicals (1940-1949) Independent (1940-1949) CNIP (1949-1958) Union for the New Republic (1958-1968)

Antoine Pinay (French pronunciation: ​[ɑ̃twan piˈnɛ]; 30 December 1891 – 13 December 1994) was a French conservative politician. He served as Prime Minister of France in 1952.

As a young man, Pinay fought in World War I and injured his arm so that it was paralyzed for the rest of his life.

After the war, he managed a small business and in 1929 he was elected mayor of Saint-Chamond, Loire.

He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1936, running as an independent candidate opposed to the Popular Front. In 1938 he was elected to the Senate, where he joined the Independent Radicals. On 10 July 1940 he voted to give the Cabinet presided over by Marshal Philippe Pétain authority to draw up a new constitution, effectively ending the French Third Republic and establishing Vichy France. In 1941, Antoine Pinay was appointed to the Conseil National of the Vichy Regime. He was also awarded the Order of the Francisque. During the Occupation, Antoine Pinay remained mayor of Saint-Chamond, although he had been urged by General Georges to move to Algiers, in order to better protect the residents of this city. Yet, trying to associate him with Vichy is inappropriate : he resigned from the Conseil National within a few months and refused any official position with the Vichy regime, such as the préfecture de l'Hérault offered by Laval. Besides, he gave several hundreds of identity papers to help Jews and Résistance members flee from France to Algiers or Switzerland. An official commission in 1946 recognized his long lasting opposition to the Nazis and the help he gave to the Résistance and let him totally free of any charge.