Early career

Richard was first elected as Mayor of Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône in 1977. In 1981, he was selected to be one of the first young leaders of the French-American Foundation.^[1]

A member of the Socialist Party (PS), Richard was elected to the National Assembly in the 1978 election. During his time in Parliament, he focused on the national budget.^[2]

Minister of Defence, 1997–2002

Elected to the Senate in the 1995 election, Richard was appointed Minister of Defence in the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin two years later by President Jacques Chirac.^[3] During his time in office, he was in charge of implementing a plan that Chirac set in motion in 1996 to reduce the French Armed Forces' establishment across Africa to 350,000 uniformed personnel, from 500,000, by 2002.^[4] Notably, he closed a key military base in the north of the Central African Republic and reduced forces at a second, in Bangui, in 1997.^[5] Also under his leadership, the government completed the destruction of its stock of land mines in accordance with the 1997 Ottawa Convention.^[6]

Richard also oversaw the transition resulting from France's 1996 decision to suspend peacetime military conscription and move to an all-volunteer professional army; President Chirac formally announced the end of compulsory military service^[7] in 2001.

Dismissing doubts about France's support for NATO in Kosovo after French officer Pierre-Henri Bunel was charged with passing bombing plans to Serbia, Richard and Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine offered in 1998 to lead the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR).^[8]

In January 2001, Richard made a submission about the Mitterrand–Pasqua affair – a controversial arms-trafficking case against Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of François Mitterrand – several weeks after magistrates had started criminal proceedings about the deal handled by Pierre Falcone's Paris-based company, Brenco International.^[9]

Seen as an ally of Jospin, Richard left office when Jean-Pierre Raffarin became Prime Minister following the 2002 election.^[10]

Return to the Senate, 2011–2023

Richard went back to his initial position as Mayor of Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, before regaining a seat in the Senate in the 2011 election. In the Socialist Party's 2011 primaries, he endorsed Martine Aubry as the party's candidate for the 2012 presidential election.^[11]

In the Senate, Richard held one of its vice presidencies from 2022 to 2023, under the leadership of its president Gérard Larcher. He was a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs.^[12] In addition to his committee assignments, Richard chaired the Senate's Taiwan friendship group. In this capacity, he visited Taiwan in 2015, 2018, 2021, and 2023, including meetings with President Tsai Ing-wen.^[13]

Richard was reelected to a second full term in the Senate in 2017, this time as a member of the liberal La République En Marche! (LREM), the party founded by Emmanuel Macron in 2016. He ran again for reelection in 2023 but was defeated by two votes. As of his departure from the Senate, he remains a municipal councillor of Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône.^[14]