“I will never come back, never. I will not come back, it is an irrevocable decision that I have taken”. In 2017, Roselyne Bachelot declared that she had turned the page on politics after a long career of more than 30 years where she held various ministerial positions. However, to everyone’s surprise, in 2020, she became Minister of Culture during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term.
An unlikely meeting
“I was really decided. And also, I thought it was totally impossible”, launches this Wednesday morning, Roselyne Bachelot on Europe 1. But then what convinced Roselyne to make her “comeback ” in politics ? Emanuel Macron? “It’s not Emmanuel Macron,” retorts the former Minister of Culture. “It’s Jean Castex. It was quite funny the sequence, because when he is appointed Prime Minister, he comes on TF1. And me, at that time, I do the pre-newspaper with Gilles Bouleau on the situation We fall into each other’s arms, because I know Castex well, “she explains.
Roselyne Bachelot wanted to refuse beforehand
But the story does not end there, as explained at the microphone of Thomas Isle in the Summer Club on Europe 1: “I go out with friends, we spend a nice evening. When I come back, I see my phone with Jean Castex flashing. And I say to myself ‘so there, I’m caught up by the patrol’, because when a new Prime Minister calls you at 11 o’clock in the evening, it makes sense”, she says all smiles.
“But I’m getting ready to tell him no and there, oh the bastard, in a smooth, sweet happy voice, he says to me ‘what if it’s for Culture?’ and there, he touches my weak point, my unfulfilled dream”, she says.
“Culture is my life”
If Roselyne Bachelot accepted the post, it is “for Jean Castex, but also for the situation of Culture, because culture is my life”. Indeed, the now columnist confides going every evening to the theater, to the cinema, to see a concert or an opera. She therefore felt invested with a mission: “I had the feeling that when you are asked to do this commando operation, I have to say yes.”