Emmanuel Macron has finally made his choice. To replace Jean Castex at Matignon, the President of the Republic appointed, Monday, May 16, Elisabeth Borne, who until then held the portfolio of Labour, Employment and Integration. His name had been circulating since Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the presidential election because of his CV which ticked several boxes. The Head of State indeed wanted a profile “attached to the social question, to the environmental question and to the productive question”. He also wanted to entrust the reins of government to a woman, thirty years after Edith Cresson, the only woman to have held the position in France until then. Franceinfo details five things to know about the new Prime Minister.
1She has a “techno” profile more than a political one
Just take a lookeye to his university CV to be convinced. A former student of the Ecole polytechnique (class of 1981), an engineer with a degree from the Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées, Elisabeth Borne did not go through the ENA, the classic course of the great servants of the State. Born in 1961 in Paris to a pharmacist mother and a father who died eleven years later, she patiently climbed all the rungs of the Republic. “It was not always easy, I lost my father when I was very young, and we ended up with my mother who had two daughters”she says in the show “Do not touch My TV” on D8.
“We didn’t really have any income, I was a pupil of the nation and therefore I was able to study with a scholarship.”
Elisabeth Bornein “Hands Off My Post”
She began her career in 1987 at the Ministry of Equipment, before joining various ministerial offices and being appointed prefect of Vienne and the Poitou-Charentes region in February 2013 – she is the first woman to hold this position. Her career in the senior civil service earned her this image of “good technician”, combining discretion and loyalty to the president. “Born, she ticks the competence box, the loyalty box, then you have to manage a majority, it’s not that easy, it requires a little human dough”, recently confided a minister to franceinfo. Because Elisabeth Borne is reputed to be more interested in the substance of the files than in the political game. A hardened technocrat? “That’s not how I see myself”she responds to the newspaper Alsace (paid item)ensuring that he also has a political profile.
But she claims her own recipe. “Running on TV sets to throw punchlines is not my method and it never will be”she tells the Figaro. The new tenant of Matignon will now have to demonstrate her ability to animate a government team, she who had never been a candidate for an election until then – she is seeking, during the legislative elections, the constituency of Vire-Evrecy, in Calvados.
2She claims to be a “leftist woman”
“I am a woman on the left. Social justice and equal opportunities are the fights of my life”ensured in February Elisabeth Borne on BFM TV. In government, she joined the Territories of Progress party in 2020, which brings together left-wing macronists. She contests the version according to which the majority leans to the right. “Helping everyone to emancipate themselves through work is a left-wing value”she explains to Figaro.
Long close to the PS, Elisabeth Borne worked in contact with several left-wing personalitiesgolds of its passages in the ministerial cabinets. Adviser to the Ministry of National Education with Lionel Jospin and then Jack Lang in the 1990s, she then followed the first at Matignon, where she dealt with the theme of transport for five years.
She was also director general of urban planning at the town hall of Paris under Bertrand Delanoë between 2008 and 2013, a period during which she became closer to Anne Hidalgo. As prefect of the Poitou-Charentes region, she also meets Ségolène Royal. The current is going well and the socialist president of the region takes him at the Ministry of Ecology as chief of staff between 2014 and 2015.
3She is described as “hardworking” and “demanding”
If Elisabeth Borne cut her teeth in the ministerial mysteries, the polytechnician also rubs shoulders with the business world. In 2002, she was Director of Strategy for SNCF before joining Eiffage in 2007. But she is best known for her time at RATP, which she directed between 2015 and 2017. The second woman to hold this chair, she “in particular took over the plan launched by its predecessor to have a 100% ecological bus fleet (80% of which will be electric in 2025), but without having time to launch the first major call for tenders “tell The echoes. Two years is still a short time at the head of a company. The leader thus just had time to adopt a new strategic plan, called “Challenges 2025″”, to prepare the public group for competition.
However, it leaves a good memory to the Unsa-RATP union, which appreciated the “franchise” and the “will” of this great “state clerk”, which has not had to face any major social conflict. For Thierry Babec, head of this union, it knew how to modernize the RATP and made it take “Strongly the shift to digital, with the establishment of a strategy department, investment in autonomous vehicles, equity investments in start-ups.” Regularly described as “hard worker” and “demanding”, However, she did not leave only good memories. According to an anonymous source quoted by The world, “we know more than one who left his office in tears” at the RATP, where she would have earned the unflattering nickname of “Burn Out”.
4She led two major reforms of the quinquennium
Elisabeth Borne joined the government in May 2017 as Minister in charge of Transport under the leadership of Nicolas Hulot, Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition. She impresses in this position by leading one of the first projects of the five-year term, the thorny reform of the SNCF. Opening to competition from rail transport, transformation of the status of the company, cessation of recruitment to the status of agents… The reform pushes railway workers into the streets. They go on strike for 37 days from March to June 2018. It is one of the most followed movements in the French rail for twenty years. However, the bill was definitively adopted on June 14, 2018. “Emmanuel Macron is grateful to her for having stood up to the most protesting unions – she has become their pet peeve – when the country found itself plunged into its longest strike since 1995”, writing Le Figaro.
On July 16, 2019, Elisabeth Borne replaced François de Rugy, embroiled in the lobster controversy, as Minister of Ecological and Inclusive Transition. She only stays there for a year. It announces the abandonment of the EuropaCity project and launches three legislative projects: the energy-climate law, the law on the orientation of mobility and the law on the circular economy. His record confirms the “policy of small steps”judge The worldElisabeth Borne not having “succeeded in putting environmental protection at the heart of government decisions”.
With the arrival of Jean Castex at the head of the government, she changed her portfolio to that of the Minister of Labour, Employment and Integration. She is notably responsible for two major reforms, that of pensions and that of unemployment insurance. If the first does not succeed, the second comes into force in December 2021. His former colleague in government Christophe Castaner has found him a flattering nickname for this, reports Le Figaro : “Minister of impossible reforms made possible”.
5She likes to walk in the desert
This should not be seen as a political metaphor, but Elisabeth Borne likes to recharge her batteries during hikes in the desert. Her fondest memory remains the discovery of Wadi Rum, in Jordan, as she confides to the newspaper Alsace. “An extraordinary desert. When you are in Petra, you have red, green, blue colors… It’s magic!”
But this divorced mother, nicknamed Babette by Young People with Macron, takes quite a few breaths. When Releasein 2018, asks her how she spends her free time, the Minister remains pensive: “Free time… An interesting concept.” A way of emphasizing his ability to work often praised by those around him. But the Minister does not say no from time to time to a play, an opera or a novel, with, precise The world“a weakness for the Finns Arto Paasilinna and Sorj Chalandon”.