Macron’s Europe minister braces for make-or-break Paris election

Clément Beaune campaigns in Paris before the first round of the French parliamentary elections. Photograph: Reuters

Emmanuel Macron’s Europe minister, Clément Beaune, is at the heart of a brutal political battle in Paris this weekend as the centrist French government tries to win a parliamentary majority against a new leftwing alliance.

Beaune, 40, seen as a rising star in Macron’s circle, helped craft the French president’s pro-Europe policy – influenced by his international student days in Dublin and Belgium – and famously piled pressure on the UK during last year’s post-Brexit fishing rights dispute.