Jean-Louis Borloo

Jean-Louis Borloo (2015)

Jean-Louis Borloo (born April 7, 1951 in Paris ) is a French politician. From June 2007 to November 2010 he was Minister of State for the Environment, Sustainable Development and Spatial Planning in the Cabinet of Prime Minister François Fillon . Previously he was Minister of Labor (2004–2007). He was also chairman of the Parti radical valoisien from 2005 to 2014 and chairman of the Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI) from 2012 to 2014 .

Life and political career

Youth, training, job

Jean-Louis Borloo spent his school days at the Paris high school Lycée Janson de Sailly , where he was enthusiastic about philosophy and history, at the same time he was involved in a scout movement for several years . In 1972 Borloo obtained a double license in law and philosophy , later also in history and economics. He completed his education with postgraduate studies in finance at the University of Manchester Commerce Institute as part of an MBA program.

He was appointed as the early 1980s lawyer admitted in Paris and founded a law firm specializing in business law. He became a star lawyer specializing in bankruptcy law and corporate restructuring and in 1980 was one of the five best-paid lawyers in the world according to Fortune . Borloo got a professorship for financial analysis at the Elite University of Commerce (HEC). From 1986 to 1991 he was chairman of the Valenciennes football club .

Member of Parliament and Mayor of Valenciennes

In 1989 his candidacy and election as mayor of Valenciennes took place - thanks to his influence the establishment of various companies in the region and, associated with it, the industrial development and the decline in the unemployment rate . As a non-party, he was elected to the European Parliament in 1989 on the Le Center pour l'Europe list maintained by Simone Veil , to which he was a member until 1992. He was non-attached and a member of the Committee on Regional Policy and Spatial Planning. In 1990 Borloo supported the founding of the small ecological party Génération écologie , which - unlike Les Verts - joined the government of François Mitterrand and Édith Cresson and appointed Brice Lalonde as the environment minister. For the regional election in the North Department in 1992, Borloo was the top candidate of an independent list, which came in fourth with 12.5%. In the parliamentary elections in 1993 he won - still without a party - under the label Divers droite a member of parliament in the 21st electoral district of the North Department . In 1994 Borloo was re-elected in the Valenciennes mayoral election.

In 1997 he was also able to renew his mandate as a candidate for the civil union pour la démocratie française (UDF). In the 1998 regional election his list increased to 19%. In 2001 he was appointed press spokesman for the UDF and was re-elected mayor of Valenciennes. He retained the office of mayor until his appointment as minister in May 2002. When the UDF split in the 2002 presidential election , Borloo joined the center-right rallying party Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) of President Jacques Chirac . At the same time he was a member of the small party Parti radical valoisien (PRad), which was associated with the UMP and represented its social liberal, most strongly centered political component.

Housing and Labor Minister

After Chirac was re-elected as President, Borloo was appointed Assistant Minister for Urban Development in the Raffarin I cabinet on May 7, 2002 . Under the strain of the worst recession in a decade and the simultaneous implementation of neoliberal social and economic reforms (pension reform, health reform, Agenda 2006), which French citizens perceived as socially unbalanced and unjust ( "méthode Raffarin" ), the conservative came up against it government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin into a tailspin.

After voters used the two rounds of regional elections (March 21 and 28, 2004 ) to punish the government, President Chirac and Prime Minister Raffarin undertook a comprehensive cabinet reshuffle, or some of the originally planned cuts in the social sector were either reversed or reversed toned down.

In the third Raffarin government from March 31, 2004 to May 31, 2005, Jean-Louis Bolloré took over government responsibility as Minister for Labor and Social Cohesion ( Ministre de l'Emploi, du Travail et de la Cohésion sociale ). In the face of rising unemployment and an increasing number of French people who received the so-called RMI ( Revenu minimal d'insertion - transition allowance for integration into working life), Borloo presented a five-year plan for social welfare to the Council of Ministers on June 30, 2004 Cohesion "( Plan de cohésion sociale ), a kind of social plan for the" forgotten of the republic ", which was supposed to remedy the" social break "in French society, which was already noticed too late.

Through the use of around 13 billion euros and a total of 20 state funding programs, along the main axes, employment policy measures, improvement of the housing situation, integration, equal opportunities, unemployment should be significantly reduced within 5 years. The aim was to specifically support socially disadvantaged young people, single mothers and long-term unemployed or recipients of RMI ( Revenu minimal d'insertion ), to provide them with an income sufficient to live on in order to try to reintegrate them into French society. In the residential construction sector, this should be achieved through additional new construction of around 900,000 apartments, renovation of vacancies and financial incentives for private landlords.

In the area of equal opportunities, intensified childcare and the expansion of boarding schools should open up new opportunities, especially for single mothers. In the field of employment, a total of around 800,000 new training contracts for young unemployed people, ABM-like measures for the long-term unemployed, an improvement in job placement by bundling the institutions involved and the creation of around 300 job centers ( maisons d'emploi ) should bring about improvement. With this plan, an attempt was made to implement the turnaround in social policy announced after the regional elections in March 2004 and to convey a humane and socially committed image of the Raffarin government to the French population - which had not succeeded in the previous years and thus led to a shift to the left among the French people Had led elections.

The Cabinet passed the plan on September 15, 2004, and the National Assembly approved it as a framework law on December 20, 2004. The 3rd Raffarin government ended prematurely (May 31, 2005) before any effects from the implementation of the plan could be seen.

In the referendum held on May 29, 2005 , around 55 percent of French voters rejected the EU constitutional treaty with their “non” . At the same time, however, this was also a vote with which they clearly expressed their dissatisfaction with the economic and social policy of the Raffarin government. The voting debacle forced President Jacques Chirac to renew the government. On the evening of the election he announced the replacement of the unpopular Raffarin government and on June 2, 2005 appointed a new government under the leadership of Dominique de Villepin , who had previously held the post of Minister of the Interior. In the Villepin government (June 2, 2005 to May 15, 2007) Jean-Louis Borloo was again minister. This time with the title “Minister for Employment, Social Cohesion and Housing” ( Ministre de l'Emploi, de la Cohésion sociale et du Logement ).

Borloo in 2007

From December 2005 Borloo was chairman of the Parti Radical, initially as a double head with André Rossinot , from November 2007 then alone.

Environment and Energy Minister

After Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President, Borloo was Minister for the Economy, Finance and Employment in the first cabinet of Prime Minister François Fillon from May to June 2007 . On June 19, 2007, Borloo was appointed Minister of Ecology, Energy and Sustainable Development with the rank of Ministre d'État (one of the highest ranking ministers) in the Fillon II cabinet. In 2010, Jean-Louis Borloo was acted as the new prime minister for the cabinet reshuffle that was due in the fall of that year. However, President Sarkozy then held on to François Fillon as Prime Minister. Borloo then announced on November 14, 2010 that he was leaving the cabinet under Fillon. His party colleague Cécile Gallez then renounced her seat in the National Assembly, so that Borloo could be re-elected as a member of parliament in her place.

Founder and chairman of the UDI

In May 2011 he ended the connection between the Parti radical and the conservative UMP. One month later, together with the Nouveau Center by Hervé Morin , the La Gauche Moderne by Jean-Marie Bockel and the Convention démocrate by Hervé de Charette, he founded the Alliance républicaine, écologiste et sociale (ARES), an association of small parties from the middle class, who had previously been associated with the UMP. The Alliance initially considered running Borloo as a candidate for the 2012 presidential election . However, he gave up the candidacy and finally spoke out in favor of Sarkozy's re-election (who, however, lost to François Hollande ).

In the parliamentary elections in June 2012, he defended his mandate, and the UMP also supported him. After the election, the MPs from the small parties previously united in the ARES formed a joint parliamentary group in the National Assembly called the Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI). Borloo took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group. In September 2012 the UDI was expanded into a party alliance. Borloo was in charge of this from the time it was founded until he retired for health reasons in April 2014. On April 30, 2014, he also resigned from his parliamentary seat.

According to politics

After retiring from politics, he founded the Énergies pour l'Afrique Foundation , which is committed to expanding the energy supply and networks in Africa. From 2016 to the end of 2018, Borloo was a member of the Board of Directors of Huawei Technologies France , the French subsidiary of the Chinese technology group Huawei . The Liberation newspaper described him as a “powerful lobbyist” for Huawei in France. In July 2019, he resigned from the offered office of Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Private

On July 21, 2005, Borloo married in Rueil-Malmaison ( Hauts-de-Seine department ) the television journalist Béatrice Schönberg, who was employed by the channel France 2 . This marriage drew a lot of criticism - especially from the trade unions - because of the mixture of media and politics .

Political résumé

Parliamentary offices and municipal offices

1989 to 2002: Mayor of Valenciennes (North) and presidency of the large municipality and its outskirts ( Val Métropole )

1989 to 1992: Member of the European Parliament

1992 to 1993 and 1998: Member of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Regional Council

1993 to 2014: Member of the 21st electoral district of the North Département (with interruptions during government functions)

Government functions

2002 to 2004: Assistant Minister for Urban Planning and Development ( Cabinet Raffarin I , Cabinet Raffarin II )
2004-2007: Labor Minister ( Cabinet Raffarin II , Cabinet de Villepin )
2007: Minister for the Economy, Finance and Labor ( Fillon I cabinet )
2007 to 2010: Minister of State , Minister of the Environment ( Fillon II cabinet )