Gérald Darmanin

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Gérald Darmanin (2019)

Gérald Moussa Darmanin (born October 11, 1982 in Valenciennes , Département Nord ) is a French politician ( UMP , LREM ). He was mayor of Tourcoing from 2014 to 2017 and French budget minister from 2017 to 2020. He has been French interior minister in the Castex cabinet since 2020 .

Family and education

Darmanin's father ran a bistro in Valenciennes, his mother worked as a cleaner and receptionist in a building belonging to the Banque de France . Darmanin's parents divorced. His paternal grandfather was from Malta; his maternal grandfather was an Algerian rifleman and Harki who fought for France in the Algerian War and emigrated to metropolitan France after the independence of Algeria. Both grandmothers come from French Flanders . Darmanin attended a Catholic private school and graduated from Sciences Po Lille .

Early political career

At the age of 16, influenced by the then party chairman Philippe Séguin , he joined the neo-Gaulle party Rassemblement pour la République (RPR). This merged in 2002 in the center-right collecting party Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) of President Jacques Chirac . He worked as an assistant to the European Parliamentarian Jacques Toubon and led the election campaign of the Tourcoing MP , Christian Vanneste , in the 2007 parliamentary elections and the 2008 local elections. In the latter, Darmanin himself was elected to the Tourcoing local council, where the UMP opposed a socialist Mayor stood. He also moved into the Metropolitan Council of the Métropole Européenne de Lille municipal association , to which Tourcoing belongs.

Darmanin's political mentor Vanneste made repeated homophobic statements in public. According to journalist Jean-Baptiste Forray, Darmanin followed him “into the gray area at the transition from right to right-wing extremist”. Darmanin wrote articles for Politique Magazine in 2008, drawing on the tradition of right-wing extremist Action française and Charles Maurras '. According to Vanneste, his political pupil was “more than Catholic, almost fanatical”.

Regional councilor, member of parliament, mayor

The MP Darmanin in 2013

In the regional elections in 2010, he moved to the regional council of Nord-Pas-de-Calais , where the UMP was in opposition. From 2011 to 2012 he was head of cabinet of UMP politician (and former judo master) David Douillet , who was first State Secretary for the French Abroad, then Minister of Sport. In the parliamentary elections in June 2012, Darmanin applied in the 10th constituency of the North Département to succeed his former mentor Vanneste, who had meanwhile switched to the national conservative RPF and competed against him. Darmanin won in the second ballot with 54.9% of the vote and entered the National Assembly . At that time he was close to Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand , whom he urged to apply for the UMP chairmanship, which Bertrand ultimately renounced.

Darmanin ran for the mayor's office of Tourcoing in the 2014 local elections and defeated the socialist incumbent in the second ballot with 45.6 to 43.4 percent. He renounced his seat on the regional council, but became one of the vice-presidents of the Métropole Européenne de Lille. In September 2014, Darmanin became the campaign spokesman for Nicolas Sarkozy , who was elected chairman of the UMP two months later and named Darmanin as the party's deputy general secretary. This was renamed Les Républicains (LR) in 2015 . Darmanin also headed Xavier Bertrand's election campaign for regional elections in the reorganized Hauts-de-France region (merger of Picardy and Nord-Pas-de-Calais). Bertrand won the election and became regional president, Darmanin also moved into the regional council and became its vice-president. He then resigned from his seat in the National Assembly.

In January 2016, Darmanin resigned as deputy general secretary of the Républicains and criticized the “environment and the method” of party chairman Sarkozy. Nevertheless, a few months later he supported him again as campaign coordinator in the primary election of the presidential candidate of the center-right camp (in which Sarkozy was defeated in the first ballot, however). In November 2016 he was reappointed Deputy Secretary General of the Républicains. He resigned from this office in March 2017 because he refused to support François Fillon as a presidential candidate in the face of the affair surrounding his wife's “bogus employment”.

minister

Darmanin, who is described as a "social Gaullist ", repeatedly criticized the presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron for his liberal economic program and his past as a banker. Nevertheless, after Macron's election victory, he accepted his offer to conservative politicians to participate in the government - as did his party colleagues Édouard Philippe and Sébastien Lecornu . Darmanin was appointed Minister for (State) Action and Public Finances (Ministre de l'Action et des Comptes publics) in the Philippe I cabinet on May 17, 2017 . This ministry was newly created and brought together the tasks of the previous ministry for public service, the assistant minister for budget in the ministry of economics and finance, and the state secretary for state reform.

He resigned his post as Vice President of the Hauts-de-France region on the same day, he remained Mayor of Tourcoing until September, since then he has only been Deputy Mayor. He retained his ministerial office even after the cabinet reshuffle in June 2017 ( Philippe II cabinet ). Because of his participation in the Macron government, he was expelled from the Les Républicains party in October 2017 (at the same time as Prime Minister Philippe, Secretary of State for the Environment Lecornu and MP Franck Riester ). Instead, he joined Macron's La République en Marche (LREM) party the following month .

After the cabinet reshuffle in July 2020, Darmanin was appointed Interior Minister under the new Prime Minister Jean Castex . The appointment sparked protests from feminists over a woman accusing Darmanin of raping her in 2009. The investigation against him was stopped in 2018, but resumed in June 2020. However, President Emmanuel Macron stood behind Darmanin and invoked the presumption of innocence .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Mael Thierry: Gérald Darmanin, l'ascendant populaire de Sarkozy. In: L'Obs , September 25, 2014.
  2. ↑ Elkabbach à Darmanin: “Vous laissez votre mère être femme de ménage?”, La question qui a choqué les internautes. In: France 3 Hauts-de-France , 8 September 2014.
  3. ↑ Charlotte Rotman: Gérald Darmanin, premier de la classe populaire. In: Liberation , September 27, 2012.
  4. ↑ Eric Nunès: Gérald Darmanin, un proche de Douillet pour succéder à Vanneste. In: Le Monde , February 22, 2012.
  5. ^ A b c d Matthieu Goar: Gérald Darmanin, un gaulliste social au budget et à la fonction publique. In: Le Monde , May 17, 2017.
  6. ^ Jean-Baptiste Forray: La République des Apparatchiks. Fayard, 2017.
  7. ↑ Biographie de Gérald Darmanin , Le portail de l'Économie, des Finances, de l'Action et des Comptes publics, Ministère de l'Économie et des Finances.
  8. ^ Christian Vanneste officialise sa candidature dans le Nord pour les legislatives. In: L'Obs , May 16, 2012.
  9. ^ Fillon: Gérald Darmanin quitte son poste de secrétaire général adjoint de LR. In: 20 minutes , March 5, 2017.
  10. ^ Geoffroy Clavel: Gérald Darmanin nommé ministre l'Action et des Comptes publics, en charge du budget et de la Fonction publique. In: Huffington Post , May 17, 2017.
  11. ↑ France's conservatives throw premier out of the party. ORF.at, October 31, 2017.
  12. ↑ Darmanin, Lecornu et Solere rejoignent LREM. In: Le Figaro , November 26, 2017.
  13. ^ Demonstrations in France "Rapists in prison, not in the government". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 13, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Darmanin, Gérald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Darmanin, Gérald Moussa (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician (UMP, LREM)
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1982
PLACE OF BIRTH Valenciennes , North Department