It was in a simple, 20-word statement late Monday afternoon that the French presidential office, the Élysée Palace, announced the appointment of Élisabeth Borne as Emmanuel Macron's new prime minister, his third in a row and the first under his new five-year term in office. Borne's first task is that of forming her new government, whose members will be announced later this week.
Élysée secretary general Alexis Kohler, who has held the post since Emmanuel Macron was first elected as president in 2017, did not appear on the steps of the Palace for the traditional pomp of an official announcement. It was, however, he who initiated the choice of appointing Borne, 61, who since 2017 has successively served as minister of transport, minister for ecological transition, and latterly as minister of labour.
For several weeks now, following Macron’s re-election on April 24th, media commentators have relayed off-the-record comments by Macron’s advisers that Borne ticked all the boxes for the post of head of government.
A former senior civil servant, Borne above all ticks the boxes of “Macronism” in its purest form; she has a long experience and knowledge of the workings and arcane procedures of the state apparatus, has worked in the private sector and has proven her loyalty to the French president.
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A graduate of the elite École Polytechnique, Borne served in several posts as a ministerial advisor and as a ministerial chief of staff under different socialist governments, in managerial posts for the Île-de-France (Greater Paris) local authority and also at the Paris City Hall, as a regional prefect (state representative), and was head of the Paris public transport operator, the RATP, until taking up her first ministerial post in Macron's first government in 2017.
Just like Alexis Kohler, Élisabeth Borne cultivated a career in both the public and private sectors, to the point of blurring the lines between the two. In 2015, when she was chief of staff to socialist environment minister Ségolène Royal, she and Kohler (then chief of staff to then economy minister Emmanuel Macron) led plans to extend the privatisation of France's motorways, raising questions over a conflict of interest because of her previous role as director of concessions with civil engineering company Eiffage, which was directly concerned by the reform.
By appointing Borne as prime minister, Macron has deliberately chosen someone who has little political capital behind her. Like Macron’s previous two prime ministers, respectively Édouard Philippe and Jean Castex, Borne owes her entry into government to Macron. However, unlike them, in 2017 she joined Macron’s La République en marche (LREM) party – now renamed Renaissance ahead of next month’s legislative elections – which, for the president a plus, given his keeness to limit the political influence exerted by his second-in-command.
After three weeks of uncertainty and swirling rumours, the newly re-elected French president has opted for the most neutral of all possible candidates, even though some among his political entourage had advised the appointment of a heavyweight, capable of leading a vibrant campaign in the forthcoming legislative elections.
Macron’s avowed preference for appointing a woman prime minister saw potential candidates from both the Left and the Right enter the frame, with insistent rumours pointing to a choice between Catherine Vautrin, a former conservative junior minister, and Marisol Touraine, a former socialist health minister.
Borne’s appointment sends a signal to the social-democrat fringe of Macron’s electorate. Following two prime ministers who had jumped ship from the conservative Les Républicains party, many among that fringe were keen to see the choice of a person regarded as coming from the Left – a desire now met, to a degree, by Borne’s background as an advisor ministers in previous socialist governments. She herself has happily adopted a leftwing label, once declaring, in a February 2021 interview with BFMTV, that “social justice and equality of opportunity is the combat of my life”. Macron, speaking on April 28th shortly after his re-election, and eyeing the electorate of the Left and Greens now united in a coalition ahead of the legislative elections, pledged that his choice for prime minister would be someone who showed clear concern for “social, environmental and productive issues”.
But while Borne has a reputation as an expert on climate change questions, notably through her experience as minister of transport minister and subsequently minister of ecological transition, her appointment on Monday met with little enthusiasm from Jean-François Julliard, director-general of Greenpeace France. “She has not stood out with strong and ambitious positions on the environment,” he said on Monday evening. “So her nomination hardly offers much hope to see France carry out its ecological transition in a way that the climate emergency requires.”
When minister of ecological transition, Borne notably supported an amendment to legislation which allowed for a tax break for producers of palm oil, an activity that is particularly harmful for ecosystems.
However, her record as labour minister includes overseeing a significant fall, despite the Covid-19 crisis, in the number of registered unemployed, even if that is in large part due to the government’s almost total funding of an expansion of apprenticeship contracts, which saw the number of apprentices rise from 480,000 at the end of 2019 to 900,000 two years later.
If still in place after the legislative elections, she will rapidly be tasked with leading negotiations over Macron’s promised reform of the pension system, and notably pushing back the age for retiring on full pension rights. Speaking between the two rounds of the presidential election in April, she told RTL radio that lengthening the retirement age to 65, from the current 62, was “necessary”, while promising there would be a “place” for “consultations” with unions and other representative bodies.
The more urgent issues on her agenda are, after first forming her government, energising the legislative election campaign and driving through the measures Macron has announced will be implemented as of this summer, notably concerning efforts to ease the mounting cost of living crisis, exacerbated by the hike in energy costs.
But as she now takes up such a major political role, vastly greater than those she has hitherto occupied, amid what promises to be turbulent times ahead, the austere image she has earned as a technocrat appears more of a disadvantage than an asset.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
This abridged English version by Graham Tearse