A divisive and combative Macronist. Reputed to be ambitious or even opportunistic. At ease on television sets to carry the thrust against the Insoumis or the RN. Involved in cultural issues, in particular public broadcasting. Claimed to be a committed feminist… Such is Aurore Bergé, who was appointed, this Thursday, at the age of 36, Minister of Solidarity. The head of the Renaissance deputies thus succeeds Jean-Christophe Combe, from civil society and who had difficulty finding his place in government.
Aurore Bergé began her militant life in 2002 when the UMP was founded. In 2010, the Sciences Po Paris graduate tried unsuccessfully to take over the presidency of “Jeunes Pop'”, the party’s youth organization. In 2013, she took a stand for marriage for all and attracted a lot of criticism in her camp. After a failure in the 2014 municipal elections in Magny-Les-Hameaux (Yvelines), she joined Alain Juppé’s close guard during the primary in 2016, before joining that of Emmanuel Macron in February 2017 and then winning the legislative elections in the 10th district of Yvelines.
Cutting-edge positions and media stunts
The young woman has established herself on the front line of macronie since her election in Yvelines in 2017, after a career on the right. She has often hoped for a government post, for example Culture, a subject dear to this daughter of actors – her father is the French voice of Sylvester Stallone. Until shedding a few tears during a rally of majority deputies in Matignon in July 2020, for not having been named in the government of Jean Castex.
After her broad re-election in the June 2022 legislative elections, Aurore Bergé had led an “offensive” campaign for the presidency of the Renaissance group, according to a colleague. In this position, she has often assumed sharp positions or even media blows, at the risk of upsetting her allies in the majority Horizons and Modem, who are sometimes taken aback.
The 30-year-old had not been followed by defending a rejected bill aimed at extending the penalty of ineligibility to more perpetrators of violence: a “circumstantial” and “opportunistic” law criticized her detractors, launched to react to the conviction of the deputy LFI Adrien Quatennens for violence on his partner.
Relations were deemed tense with the Renaissance president of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, whom she accused of being too friendly with the opposition. And in the Hemicycle, Aurore Bergé was initially particularly involved in cultural issues, in particular public broadcasting. She also claims her feminist commitment, at the forefront of demanding the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution. A constitutional law proposal from the left got a first green light from MPs, but has since been held up to the fate of a possible broader revision of the Basic Law.
The macronist also defends a strict vision of secularism, close to that of the former Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer or the former Prime Minister Manuel Valls. In October 2019, she created controversy in her camp, saying she was ready to vote on a bill by Eric Ciotti (LR) on the ban on the veil for school attendants.
“She plays it solo”
In politics, his successive affinities, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Fillon, Alain Juppé then Emmanuel Macron, earned him a reputation as ambitious, even opportunist. “She plays it solo”, squeaks a former macronist. But Aurore Bergé, engaged very young on the right, has always claimed to follow the same “liberal, progressive, feminist and European” guideline.
As a young mother, she is also very present on social networks, after a career as a private communicator for the Spintank and then Hopscotch agencies. If LFI reacted strongly to his appointment by reproaching him for his “unworthiness” and for being “deaf to any opposition”. a leader of the majority still assured recently: “she deserves” a position in the government. “She is on all fronts, even if it is sometimes better to slow down, to target her interventions”. “She has the quality of her faults, swept support within the group. She erased five years of deputies ”Playmobil””.