Élisabeth Borne, who has been appointed France’s first woman prime minister in more than 30 years, has a reputation as a technocrat with a long career in many different government ministries and local administrations. She is experienced in negotiating with trade unions, seen as crucial as Emmanuel Macron prepares an overhaul of the pensions and benefits system which could lead to street protests.
The 61-year-old engineer, who had previously headed Paris’s state transport company, RATP, was fiercely loyal to the centrist president during his first term, when she served as minister for transport, environment and finally labour from 2020.
Borne, who describes herself as a “woman of the left” has been a regular in the corridors of French power for several decades, serving as an adviser to ministers on under François Mitterrand and advising the Socialist environment minister Ségolène Royal in 2014. She also worked on urban planning at Paris city hall under the leftwing mayor Bertrand Delanoë.
During Macron’s first term in office, Borne often contested the view that the pro-business president had veered from his stance of “neither left nor right” to firmly centre right. Borne, who describes herself as driven by “social justice and equal opportunities” would repeat Macron’s argument that “helping everyone to free themselves through work is a value of the left”. She told Le Figaro last year: “Social democracy is still alive and it’s the president who is leading it.”
Borne was raised in Paris. Her mother was from Normandy and the daily Libération has reported that her father was Jewish with Russian roots, from a family who had taken refuge in France in 1939. A member of the French Resistance, he was deported in 1942 and died in 1972, when she was a child.
When Borne served as the first female prefect of the western region of Poitou-Charentes, as she signed her first decree of French naturalisation for a person who had obtained citizenship, she reportedly cited her own family roots which she said symbolised the integration of refugees in France.
Known to discreetly vape, even in parliament, Borne was regularly on television at the height of the Covid pandemic to remind French people to work from home and defend the government’s job protection scheme. She has said, however, that she is not interested in putting herself centre-stage, and Ifop poll last month found she was not a household name. Forty-five per cent of respondents said they didn’t know who she was.
Borne was admitted to hospital with Covid in March 2021 and was administered oxygen, an experience she described as nerve-wracking.
She is said to be precise on technical detail. She is a lover of maths, saying she finds in numbers “something quite reassuring, quite rational”. Agence France-Presse said that behind the scenes in the ministries where she served, she was nicknamed “Borne out” for the demands she made of her collaborators, a play on words with “burn out”.
