Elisabeth Borne, a reputed tenacious technician at Matignon

Second woman appointed Prime Minister under the Fifth Republic, Elisabeth Borne, 61, is a technician from the left reputed to be tenacious and whose loyalty throughout the last five years, in three difficult ministries, made the difference to access Matignon. Appointed 30 years after Edith Cresson, the only Prime Minister between 1991 and 1992, Elisabeth Borne, who was Ségolène Royal’s chief of staff, is a member of the left wing of the macronie, an asset at a time when new reforms are announced. social, starting with “the mother of battles” on pensions.

This engineer, born April 18, 1961 in Paris, a graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and Polytechnique, a senior civil servant, defines herself as “a leftist woman” with “social justice and equality of chances” at the heart of its struggles. When she arrived at the Ministry of Labor in July 2020, already in the midst of a health crisis linked to Covid-19, she notably had to manage the highly contested file of the reform of unemployment insurance, unanimously denounced by the unions. Presented in March 2021 in a version “adapted” to the crisis, it fully entered into force in December, after having been suspended for a time.

Also to its credit, the “One young person, one solution” plan presented in July 2020 which mobilized a range of employment measures, including massive learning aid, to avoid a “sacrificed generation”. She had also inherited the explosive pension file, even if it had been put away. This sexagenarian always dressed to the nines, often an electronic cigarette in hand – including discreetly in the hemicycle of the assemblies -, is reputed to know her files well. “More political” than her predecessor Muriel Pénicaud, according to an observer in the sector, she maintained more fluid relations with the social partners.

“Perhaps she is a little more rigorous on a number of things, in relations anyway”, but “the strategy is the same”, however tempered Philippe Martinez (CGT) last year. “It’s a great techno”, recently commented another union official, who did not see it at Matignon. “If we say to ourselves that there is a need for empathy, for once, you are going a long way,” he gritted, while acknowledging that “she does not have a bad record” at the Ministry of Labor.

Nicknamed “Born out” in the corridors of his ministries

In the corridors of the ministries where she officiated, we recall that she was nicknamed “Borne out” for her supposed harshness towards her collaborators, a play on words with “burn out”, or exhaustion syndrome. Elisabeth Borne had multiplied in recent months the interventions in the media to defend the action of the government, in particular the “anti-dismissal shield” of partial unemployment in the face of the crisis, or to beat the recall on teleworking in the face of Covid-19. She herself spent several days in the hospital in March 2021 after contracting the virus, later confiding that she had had an “agonizing” experience and had been “punctually administered oxygen”.

Before arriving rue de Grenelle, Elisabeth Borne had first managed the transport portfolio in the governments of Edouard Philippe. During these two years in this position, she had gained a certain foundation by completing one of the emblematic reforms of the five-year term, that of the SNCF, and by carrying the dense law on mobility (LOM). She then replaced François de Rugy as Minister for the Ecological and Solidarity Transition during a reshuffle in July 2019. Elisabeth Borne had already made a stint in 2014 as chief of staff to the Minister of the Environment Ségolène Royal. The previous year, in 2013, she had been prefect of the Poitou-Charentes region, then chaired by Ms. Royal.

A career essentially devoted to public service

In 2015, Elisabeth Borne was however appointed president of the RATP, a large public transport company, a few years after having been director of strategy for the SNCF, in the early 2000s. In a career essentially devoted to public service, in particular in the socialist cabinets in the 1990s, with Lionel Jospin in Education or Jack Lang in Culture, Ms. Borne also spent time in the private sector, in charge of concessions for the Eiffage group in 2007, before joining the Paris City Hall as director of town planning.

Very discreet about her private life, having lost her “very young” father with a mother who “didn’t really have an income”, she was a pupil of the Nation, confident of having found in maths “something quite reassuring , fairly rational”. Divorced and mother of a child, she also indicated that the Jewish community was “hers”, during an interview on Radio J in June 2021.

Elisabeth Borne is the fourth head of government under the Fifth Republic to have never sought a mandate by universal suffrage, after Georges Pompidou, Raymond Barre and Dominique de Villepin. If she had announced her candidacy for the legislative elections in Calvados in June, this lack of “rootedness” and a political sense deemed relative had caused the circumspection of certain caciques of the presidential majority when her name had been put forward the day after the re-election of Emmanuel Macron.

In April, in an Ifop poll, 45% of those questioned said they did not know her. But after many hypotheses, from Catherine Vautrin to Marisol Touraine, it is this faithful – “loyal, honest, hardworking and rather funny when you know her”, according to an elected official – that the head of state has chosen. With a first major challenge: to lead the legislative battle so that Macronie retains its majority in the Assembly.