Bruno Le Maire

Bruno Le Maire (2014)

Bruno Le Maire (born April 15, 1969 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) is a French politician ( UMP , LREM ). Le Maire has been Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance since May 2017 . Previously he was Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries from June 2009 to May 2012.

Education and administrative career

Le Maire's father was an executive at Total , while his mother ran two Catholic private schools in succession. After attending school at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand , he studied at three elite universities : initially literature at the École normal supérieure (ENS), where he graduated in 1990 after just one year with a license in German studies. The maîtrise acquired the following year at the University of Paris IV with a thesis on Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time . A subsequent study of political science at Sciences Po , he interrupted to take the agrégation (license to teach for higher schools) in modern languages ​​and literature, which he passed in 1992 as the best in his class. He then worked as a teacher for two years. At the same time, he obtained the Sciences Po diploma in 1993 . Finally, he attended the École nationale d'administration (ENA; class “Valmy”) from 1996–1998 .

After completing his training at ENA, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , where he became an employee in the Directorate for Strategy, Security and Disarmament . This led to cooperation with the then General Secretary of the Élysée Palace , Dominique de Villepin . When he was Foreign Minister between 2002 and 2004, Le Maire was one of his closest collaborators during the Iraq crisis from 2002 to 2003. When de Villepin was Minister of the Interior from March 2004 to May 2005, he was again a member of his closest staff.

When de Villepin became Prime Minister on May 31, 2005 , Le Maire was initially his political advisor. On July 12, 2006, he was appointed cabinet director when the previous cabinet director Pierre Mongin became director general of the RATP . Le Maire held the post of cabinet director until the end of de Villepin's term on May 15, 2007.

Political career

Le Maire in 2007

As a candidate for the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP), he successfully ran for parliamentary elections in June 2007 for a member of the National Assembly . He took over the mandate in the 1st constituency of the Département Eure from his party friend, the previous President of the National Assembly Jean-Louis Debré , who was appointed President of the Constitutional Court. He held the mandate until January 13, 2009. At the same time, Le Maire was also a member of the municipal council of Évreux until March 16, 2008 .

In April 2008 he first became political advisor to the UMP and on December 12, 2008 he took over from Jean-Pierre Jouyet the office of State Secretary for Europe in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Commissioner for Franco-German Friendship , after this President of the Financial Market Authority ( Autorité des marchés financiers ). On June 23, 2009 he was appointed Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries by President Nicolas Sarkozy to succeed Michel Barnier in the second cabinet of Prime Minister François Fillon ; his successor in the office was on May 15, 2012 Stéphane Le Foll .

In the regional elections in 2010, he was the top candidate on the list of Majorité presidentialielle (UMP and allies). With 30.7% in the second ballot, he was defeated by the incumbent regional president Alain Le Vern of the socialists. However, until the dissolution of the region in late 2015, he was a member of the regional council as an opposition representative.

In the primary election of the new UMP party chairman at the end of November 2014, Le Maire ran against Nicolas Sarkozy and Hervé Mariton as a liberal candidate from the second row. Le Maire received almost 30 percent of the vote and was second behind Sarkozy (almost 65 percent of the vote). Under Sarkozy's leadership, the UMP was renamed Les Républicains in 2015 .

In the primaries held on November 20 and 27, 2016 to find a candidate from the center-right camp for the 2017 presidential election , Le Maire received 2.4% of the votes (5th place) and was eliminated in the first round of voting. He then announced his support for Fillon's candidacy. When the latter was suspected of misappropriating state funds, Le Maire resigned from his election campaign team on March 1, 2017.

After Emmanuel Macron's victory in the presidential election, Le Maire offered to work with his new government, even though the Républicains decided to join the opposition. Macron then appointed Le Maire as Minister of Economic Affairs in the Philippe I cabinet on May 17, 2017 . Le Maire was then suspended from his party, Les Républicains . He ran as a candidate for Macron's La République en Marche (LREM) party for the 2017 parliamentary elections in France . With 64.5% in the second ballot (with a low turnout), he again won the 1st constituency of the Eure department. In the subsequently formed Philippe II cabinet , he was confirmed in his ministerial office (now with the economics and finance department ), also in the subsequent Castex cabinet . In September 2017 he officially joined the LREM party.

Activity as a writer

Le Maire has written several books, some of them literary, including one (published in 2013) about his time as minister under President Sarkozy, which caused a sensation because of his intimate knowledge of the relationship between Merkel and Sarkozy and was published in March 2014 in Germany.

Private

In addition to French, Le Maire also speaks English and German. He is married and has four kids.

reception

In the film La Conquête by Xavier Durringer about the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 he was appointed by actor Emmanuel Noblet shown.

Award

In May 2015 he received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class for his "great commitment to German-French understanding".

Publications

• Le ministre. Grasset, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-246-67611-8 .
• Des hommes d'état. Grasset, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-246-73581-6 (awarded the Prix ​​Edgar Faure 2008).
• Sans mémoire, le président se vide. Editions Gallimard, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-07-013175-4 .
• with Véronique Auger: Nourrir la planète. La Cherche midi, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-7491-2156-7 .
• Musique absolute. Une répétition avec Carlos Kleiber . Editions Gallimard, Paris 2012.
• Times of power. Behind the scenes of international politics. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2014, ISBN 978-3-498-03807-6 (Original: Jours de pouvoir. Editions Gallimard, Paris 2013, ISBN 978-2-07-013903-3 ).
• A nos enfants. Editions Gallimard, Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-07-014612-3 .

Web links

Commons : Bruno Le Maire  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Personal homepage (French)
• Information on the Member of the National Assembly (French)

Footnotes

1. ^ ^{A b} Marie-Laure Delorme: De bons élèves. L'École normal supérieure vue de l'intérieur. Stock, 2015.
2. ^ Clémence de Blasi: Bruno Le Maire: Le plus proustien des Républicains. In: Charles , No. 22, summer 2017.
3. ↑ Bruno Le Maire new representative for German-French cooperation.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Deutschland-Frankreich-Diplo.de , December 12, 2008; Minister of State Gloser meets the new French Secretary of State for Europe Le Maire. Press release. In: Auswaertiges-Amt.de , December 17, 2008.  
4. ↑ Rudolf Balmer: France's UMP elects new party leader. A real fresh start is possible. In: the daily newspaper , November 27, 2014.
5. ↑ Michaela Wiegel : Sarkozy's second chance. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 30, 2014.
6. ↑ Les results: Results provisoires de la Primaire ouverte de la droite et du center. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 28, 2016 ; Retrieved November 27, 2016 (French). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ Bruno Le Maire leaves the election campaign team of presidential candidate Fillon. ZEIT online, March 1, 2017, accessed on March 3, 2017 . 
8. ↑ Tristan Quinault Maupoil: Bruno Le Maire confirme être en contact avec Macron, la droite parle de "trahison". In: Le Figaro , May 8, 2017.
9. ↑ Arthur Berdah, Loris Boichot: [1]
10. ^ Bruno Le Maire roule officiellement pour La République En Marche. In: 20minutes , September 24, 2017.
11. ^ Nils Minkmar : Politics before the collapse. Flight blind, self-praise, broken words, lies. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 24, 2013; Ursula Welter : The stressful everyday life of a minister.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Deutschlandfunk.de , May 6, 2013; Sascha Lehnartz: When Sarkozy tried to flirt, Merkel grabbed the cake. In: Die Welt , May 11, 2013.  
12. ↑ German representations in France: The former Minister Bruno Le Maire was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 2, 2015  
13. ↑ Olivier Guez : The politician and the maestro. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 2, 2013, p. 29 ( PDF ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) . 
14. ^ From the French by Grete Osterwald.