Christian Estrosi

He was a professional motorcycle racer and competed at the world championship level in Grand Prix motorcycle racing.[3] His best result was a fourth-place finish in the 500cc 1978 French Grand Prix.[3] He repeated the result with another fourth-place finish at the 1979 Spanish Grand Prix.[3] He received the Youth and Sports gold medal.

He was a member of the municipal council of Nice from 1983 to 1990, when he resigned.[1] He was re-elected in 2008, when he was also elected Mayor of Nice.[1] In 2013, he rejected a plan to build a mosque funded by a businessman from Saudi Arabia in Nice.[4]

He has served as President of the Urban community of Nice Côte d'Azur since 2008 and Chairman of Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur since 2012. He served as regional councillor of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur from 1992 to 2002, and as its Vice President from 1992 to 1998.[1] He served as Vice-president of the General Council of Alpes-Maritimes from 2001 to 2003, and as its President from 2003 to 2008.[1]

He served as a member of the National Assembly of France for the 5th constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes from 1988 to 1993, then from 1997 to 2005, from 2008 to 2009, then from 2010 to 2016.[1] In addition, he has held several ministerial positions in the French government in Paris.[1] He was appointed on 2 June 2005 as Deputy Minister of Land Management.[1] He was then appointed on 19 June 2007 as the Deputy Minister of the Overseas French territories (DOM-TOM).[1] From 2009 to 2010, he served as Deputy Minister in charge of Industry.[1]

He is the recipient of a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Haifa in Israel. He is a Knight of the Legion of Honour from the French Republican, an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, and a Commander of the Order of Saint-Charles from Monaco.

In 2016, Estrosi threatened to sue people who distributed photos of an incident in which Nice police ordered a Muslim woman to remove her burkini, saying that circulating the photos would "provoke defamatory remarks and threats against police agents".[5][6]

On 8 May 2017, he announced his resignation from the presidency of the PACA region to run to become mayor of Nice again, the day after the second round of the presidential election.[7] He is still managing the region as vice-president.