The current French ambassador to Ukraine, a specialist in European issues, is recognized by his peers for his “coolness” acquired during a long career at the Quai d’Orsay which took him from Brussels to the Horn of Europe. ‘Africa.
He probably did not expect to relive a situation of war, even less at the gates of Europe. At almost 58 years old, after experiencing the refugee camps in the Horn of Africa and the civil war in Somalia, Etienne de Montaigne de Poncins is once again exposed. Since the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s tanks on Thursday, the country has been plunged into a deadly conflict – the UN said on Monday that it had recorded 102 civilians killed, including seven children. While several Western embassies have relocated to Lviv, France first decided to maintain its embassy in Kiev, before transferring it in turn to this large city in western Ukraine, as announced on Monday evening the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, on BFM TV.
With his teams, Etienne de Poncins manages the crisis cell opened from the Russian offensive on Thursday. Nearly 700 French nationals are currently in Ukraine. Protected by a GIGN team, the diplomatic staff answered the calls and tried to identify the French people still present as well as their location. For now, any evacuation is “impossible”assured the World the head of the Quai d’Orsay crisis center in Paris, Stéphane Romatet. “In crisis situations, what counts is being a good team leader. Etienne de Poncins is, glide to Release MEP and former Minister for European Affairs, Nathalie Loiseau.
Appointed to Kiev in July 2019, this diplomat “seasoned”, said an agent stationed in Paris, saw the escalation mount between Ukraine and Russia. At the Elysée, he can count on Isabelle Dumont, continental Europe adviser to the diplomatic cell and former ambassador to Ukraine to exchange regularly and report information. “We are lucky to have two people who get along well, who know the Ukrainian interlocutors,” says Nathalie Loiseau. who adds: “He was very aware of the situation, of the needs of the Ukrainian army in particular […]. He traveled a lot in the country, in Lviv, Mariupol or Kharkiv. It is not the diplomat who remains locked up in his embassy, reading dispatches and meeting officials.
“A boy imbued with the sense of the state”
“He is calm, serene, remarkably cool and reassuring for our compatriots”, today praises Alain Lamassoure, former Minister Delegate for European Affairs in the Balladur government. On leaving the ENA in 1990, De Poncins joined his cabinet after a stint in the European Affairs department of the ministry. He then took care of community negotiations, after the Maastricht agreement in 1992. In Brussels, he then joined the permanent representation of France to the European Union. Pierre Sellal, a figure from the Quai d’Orsay, former permanent representative of France to the EU (from 2002 to 2009 then from 2014 to 2017) remembers a “very organized mind”, a “courageous type, who has the necessary coolness”.
In 2002, his name was given to former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who was preparing to chair the Convention on the Future of Europe, an institution responsible for rethinking the European institutions and which would lead to a draft European constitution taken over by the Treaty of Rome in 2004. “VGE wanted to surround itself with the best young European diplomats, lawyers and economists, says Alain Lamassoure. De Poncins is THE profile of the great French diplomat. A boy imbued with the sense of the State, aware that he belongs to the great tradition of French diplomacy.
“Discreet”, “cultivated” and “efficient”
After the corridors of the Brussels institutions, Etienne de Poncins, to whom some lend Fillonist sympathies, was appointed by Jacques Chirac ambassador to Bulgaria, in 2007, a few days before the arrival of Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée. “You took up your duties at an intense moment”, will tell him Pierre Moscovici, during a hearing of the commission of inquiry into the conditions of release of the Bulgarian nurses and doctor detained in Libya, in November 2007.
Chance of the calendar, the diplomat will indeed find himself at the heart of an ultra-mediatised affair, a political and media soap opera mixing the ex-president, his wife Cécilia Sarkozy and the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. At the time, the diplomat’s slender figure and dark gaze occupied the Bulgarian media space, from which he received a very favorable reception.
From Kenya – where he was appointed ambassador in 2010 – to Mogadishu, the Somali capital in the throes of a civil war, De Poncins discovered Africa and humanitarian crises. “He is a very brave person,” describes Nathalie Loiseau, who has known him for thirty years.
At the time, “He was fighting against officials in Brussels who were preventing him from going to Mogadishu”. From 2013 to 2015, attached to the External Action Service in Brussels, he will also lead the civilian mission for the reinforcement of regional maritime capacities in the Horn of Africa – EUCAP Nestor, refocused in 2015 on Somalia only.
Humanly, his professional entourage describes a person “discreet, cultured, who has a fine analysis of situations” (Anne Genetet, LREM MP for the 11th constituency of French people living abroad). “He’s not a nervous person. He is a balanced, calm and efficient person,” also notes Benoît d’Aboville, former ambassador to Poland, where De Poncins assisted him between 1999 and 2002.
“He never puts himself forward, has this phlegmatic side, descending from Montaigne but at the same time constantly on the ground”, concludes Nathalie Loiseau. To an interlocutor who recently asked him if he intended to change course in favor of the recent reform of the senior civil service, which is shaking up the Quai d’Orsay, the diplomat simply dropped a “you’re kidding me !” evocative.