1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and soon 7. The years pass and he remains. For almost seven years, Bruno Le Maire has been steering the French economy through health and inflationary storms. To those who gave him views on Matignon, where Gabriel Attal was finally appointed, the French Minister of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty repeated that he liked being in Bercy and wanted to stay there. It’s done.
In place since the first day of the Edouard Philippe government on May 17, 2017, Bruno Le Maire saw Jean Castex succeed him, then Elisabeth Borne and now Gabriel Attal. Reshuffle after reshuffle, the ministers parade, he does not.
His German counterpart Schäuble in the viewfinder
More popular in public opinion than most other members of the government, Bruno Le Maire, 54, has been at the head of Bercy for 2,432 days. He thus continues to push the record for duration for a Minister of the Economy.
Before him, Christine Lagarde and Pierre Bérégovoy had remained in this position respectively 4 years and 10 days for the first and 3 years, 10 months and 20 days for the second. It remains to match, or even surpass, his former German counterpart Wolfgang Schäuble, who lasted almost eight years.
Presidential ambitions for 2027?
Although he proudly holds a record for longevity in government, his relations with successive Prime Ministers have not always been smooth, with the boss of Bercy not hesitating to display certain disagreements. As for President Emmanuel Macron, whom he joined on the evening of his victory in 2017, he is wary of this minister who often prefers to go it alone and who is regularly credited with presidential ambitions in 2027.
Bercy will have allowed him to be reborn politically after his bitter failure in the right-wing primary at the end of 2016. A shock in the hitherto smooth journey of this brilliant student from the nice neighborhoods, normalien and enarque, who “grew up in the corridors of ministerial cabinets, as he himself says.
It was in 2007, on the advice of one of his mentors, Dominique de Villepin, for whom he was chief of staff at Matignon, that this practicing Catholic was elected deputy for the first time, in Normandy. This Germanophile music lover, who calls himself both a writer and a politician, is the father of four boys and married to a painter.