Socialist baron of Lyon, who became an early supporter of Emmanuel Macron, Gérard Collomb, 76, fought for a long time in the opposition before embodying his city for almost 20 years then experiencing a delicate end to his journey marked by his defeat in the 2020 municipal elections.
One of President Macron’s “faithful among the faithful”
Officially, it was to regain his stronghold that the man who was long described as one of the “faithful among the faithful” of President Macron abandoned his post at the Ministry of the Interior in September 2018, in the midst of a political storm surrounding the affair. Benalla.
At odds with Macronie whose “lack of humility” he denounces, criticized on the left where he is accused of right-wing drift for his anti-terrorism law and his asylum/immigration bill, he finally finds himself pushed back to the benches of the municipal opposition by the Greens who won both the town hall and the metropolis, the real seat of power in Lyon. “It took me twenty years to conquer this city, twenty years to transform it, we can’t leave it like that,” he said in 2020 during this electoral campaign marked by his alliance with the right between the two rounds. By stepping aside behind the LR candidate for the metropolis, he evokes both “a heartbreak” and “a liberation”.
A few decades earlier, this former teacher with a mustache and big glasses, elected deputy at the time of the pink wave led by François Mitterrand in 1981, fought for a long time before getting his hands on the capital of Gaul. “No offense to poor Gérard Collomb, he will never be mayor,” Michel Noir told him during a televised debate in 1983. The person concerned fumed: “it will come.” Defeated that year, then in 1989 and 1995, he achieved his goals six years later, when the centrist Raymond Barre gave him his support to counter the very right-wing Charles Millon.
A “social reformist”
Born on June 20, 1947 in Chalon-sur-Saône to a mother who was a housekeeper and a father who was a metalworker, this scholar of classics, a fan of Eddy Mitchell, began the transformation of Lyon into a modern metropolis.
The car parks on the banks of the Rhône become walks; the Vélo’v ride before the Parisian Véli’b; a vast urban renovation project is starting in La Duchère; the Confluence eco-district is growing at the end of the Presqu’île and businesses are flocking.
In the elections of 2008 as in 2014, Collomb triumphed. Too much, according to some who consider him effective but autocratic, sometimes warm but often curt. Always further to the right, too, his detractors mock. He then calls himself a “social reformist”.
He saw a sort of affiliation with Emmanuel Macron
When he met the future President of the Republic, the Lyonnais saw in his 30-year-old junior a sort of filiation. “What I tried to do for my city, what he will do tomorrow for France, is to bring people together,” he believes on the day of the election of Emmanuel Macron, of whom he becomes for some a mentor, for others a “grumbler”. He was immediately appointed to Place Beauvau, but the government parenthesis ended badly: he voluntarily left the government after the Benalla affair, “difficult to live with” for him. His return to the capital of Gaul, where water has flowed under the bridges since his departure, marks the end of his reign.
His lieutenants go into dissidence, his camp is torn apart and he himself gives in to anger – he has never supported the idea of emancipation, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem or Thierry Braillard have paid the price by joining governments before him.
“Collomb has always been concerned about the mark he will leave in History”
However, there is no question of handing over. At almost 73 years old, he wants a new mandate at the head of the Metropolis, his baby. “I want to reassure everyone, I will not stay until I am 90!” he laughs in the press a few weeks after his defeat at the polls.
“Collomb has always been concerned about the trace he will leave in History, about transmission,” underlines a former close friend. The baron could not beat the record of Édouard Herriot, his model who reigned over Lyon for almost half a century. But ministerial interlude aside, he will have equaled the longevity of Louis Pradel, the mayor and builder of the La Part-Dieu district, by continuing to build towers there.
Member of the oldest Masonic obedience
Gérard Collomb initiated the development of the Jean Jaurès foundation for which he has served as general secretary since its creation in 1992. Furthermore, he has never hidden his membership in Freemasonry and remains a member of the oldest Masonic obedience, the Grand Orient de France.
Divorced from Geneviève Bateau, Gérard Collomb then had a son with his partner Meriem Nouri then two daughters after a remarriage with Caroline Rougé.