The intruder of the news gives each evening a spotlight on a personality who could have passed under the radars of the news.
It is a man in the shadows, one of the most powerful at the head of the state, who is leaving. Matignon confirmed to franceinfo on Wednesday June 7 that Aurélien Rousseau, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, will leave his post in early July. He already wanted to leave in the spring, that had been refused. We were in the middle of a pension reform. The Matignon hotel, he has long described it as “terminus of shit”. It must be said that he knows about it, having already been deputy director of the cabinet of Manuel Valls from 2015 – he had arrived a month before the Bataclan attack. This had not prevented him from continuing with Bernard Cazeneuve.
Aurélien Rousseau has a very particular course, one could even speak of intruder among all these senior officials, moreover in Macronie. The State Councilor has indeed started as a history-geo teacher in Seine-Saint-Denis. He will be 47 in three weeks. Originally from the Cévennes, he was born in Alès, with a singsong accent, into a family made up of resistance fighters and various shades of the left: the elected communist grandmother, the mother who was a fan of Michel Rocard. He himself takes his card from the PC when he is a teacher. He campaigned for municipal elections in Paris, to the point of joining the cabinet of a communist deputy, Pierre Mansat. Wherever it goes, it has this roundness that facilitates the link. He writes and stages plays. At the town hall of Paris, he crosses paths with a man who changes everything, the chief of staff of the mayor Bertrand Delanoë: Nicolas Revel, who convinces him to try the ENA competition. And it works ! He comes out among the first of the class of 2007-2009. The same as Clément Beaune, the current Minister of Transport, and Florian Philippot.
The modesty of one who also knows his worth
He is also a man who has gone through very difficult periods in terms of health. A Guillain-Barré syndrome that he mentions in the book he released last summer, The Injury and the Rebound. It was more than fifteen years ago, he recounts months of resuscitation, disability too – he is not completely recovered. Book in which he also evokes the depression made at the end of the Covid crisis which he spent, for eighteen months, at the head of the Regional Health Agency of Ile-de-France. Eighteen months to manage the lack of masks, vaccines, hospital beds. Not enough, however, to dissuade him from “get back on the horse” at Matignon last summer. But with a kind of humility that he mentioned in September 2022, in the program C à vous on France 5, on the occasion of the promotion of his book. He had just moved to Matignon. And for him, the lesson of the Covid is the need to say that we do not know. Even if “It’s very difficult”.
So low profile. Even if behind this modesty, Aurélien Rousseau is also someone who knows exactly his value. He knows in particular that managing this Covid with Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace or in the past major strikes at the RATP when Elisabeth Borne was its president, all of this made him legitimate to land the post of chief of staff.
After a year at Matignon, being rounder and less directive than his predecessors, he is humanly very appreciated. In certain ministries, voices will sometimes say that Matignon is not required. With Elisabeth Borne herself, everything started well, both are very complementary. The dircab has always welcomed the fact that“She had no ideological a priori”. Up to a point, however. This winter, when she agreed to “to question” state medical aid in view of the future immigration law: for him, it was “out of the question”. She replied: “Let’s first see what it represents before deciding”.
More social and on the left than her, Aurélien Rousseau is the one who will have tried to maintain the link with the unions, in particular the CFDT on pensions. Perhaps he will write one day, in a forthcoming book, the real reasons for this departure after a year.
The next step for him? Deputy Director General of Caisse des dépôts, in charge of social policies – the online media Context has confirmed the exact position. He is also a municipal councilor for Saint-Hilaire-de-Brethmas near Alès. And in the city, father of three children including a baby with his new wife, Marguerite Cazeneuve, the former social adviser of the Elysée and Matignon, today number two in health insurance. There is no doubt that he will also find some time to return to trout fishing in his native Cévennes.