PARIS — Former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin died at age 88. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu confirmed Jospin's death, according to a post on X.

Jospin served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002. During his tenure, he served under President Jacques Chirac in a power-sharing arrangement known as cohabitation.

As Prime Minister, Jospin reduced the statutory work week in France from 39 hours to 35 hours. He also enacted the parity law requiring political parties to field equal numbers of male and female candidates in national elections and introduced civil unions for both LGBTQ+ and heterosexual couples.

Jospin resisted shifting the French left toward free-market reforms similar to those implemented in Britain at the same time. "Yes to the market economy, no to a market society," Jospin said.

Born on July 12, 1937, Jospin grew up in a Protestant family. His mother worked as a midwife. According to family lore, his mother used the works of Voltaire to raise her pelvis while in labor.

Before joining the Socialist Party, Jospin was associated with Trotskyist groups. He took part in the left-wing protests in France in 1968 and attended the Ecole d'Administration Nationale.

Prior to 1981, Jospin was an economics professor. In 1981, President Francois Mitterrand named Jospin head of the Socialist Party. Bribery and fraud scandals led to the Socialist Party's defeat in the 1993 parliamentary elections. Following the Socialist Party's defeat in the 1993 parliamentary elections, Jospin helped restore the party's credibility. He was not implicated in any allegations of corruption.

Jospin withdrew from politics after placing third in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, finishing behind Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jacques Chirac. In that first round, Le Pen and Jospin each received more than 16% of the vote, with Le Pen receiving approximately 200,000 more votes than Jospin and advancing to the second round. Chirac won a second term as President in the 2002 presidential election.

"I have the memory of the importance of silence. If you weren't quiet, you ran the risk of putting people in danger. Certainly in political life I've retained a certain horror of talkativeness," Jospin said.