Little known to the public and diplomats until eight months ago, Jean-Noël Barrot had barely made his mark as Minister Delegate for Europe when he was promoted to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Michel Barnier’s government.
At 41, the MoDem vice-president replaces Stéphane Séjourné, who was due to join the European Commission on Monday 16 September, following the shocking resignation of Thierry Breton due to deep disagreements with his German president, Ursula von der Leyen. Barrot is the fourth head of French diplomacy since Emmanuel Macron was first elected in 2017; the third since the start of his second term in 2022, while the political crisis caused by the dissolution of the National Assembly is worrying France’s partners and confusing its message.
If his career is dazzling, Barrot appears to be a neophyte at the diplomatic level. The former student of HEC, where he taught economics after a stint at MIT in Boston, holds a PhD in management sciences. His research work has focused, among other things, on corporate finance. He also began his ministerial career within Bercy, as minister delegate responsible for digital technologies (from July 2022 to January this year). Without having really made a breakthrough in the media, he then worked to strengthen regulation of the sector, in order to protect minors from online pornography and limit the omnipotence of multinationals.
A baptism of fire at the UN General Assembly
Jean-Noël Barrot presents himself as a “A convinced European” He is also a true supporter of the Franco-German tandem, despite the strong tensions between Paris and Berlin, especially since the war in Ukraine. The grandson of Christian Democrat resistance fighter Noël Barrot, he is the son of the former centrist minister and European Commissioner Jacques Barrot, who died in 2014 while serving on the Constitutional Council. Like his father, a member of the Haute-Loire parliament for more than three decades, Jean-Noël Barrot began his political career in the canton of Yssingeaux, but it was in the Yvelines that he was elected to the National Assembly in 2017, a department where he was re-elected in July after its dissolution.
The head of state’s surprise decision, however, took him by surprise at the time. A few weeks later, in the midst of the Olympic Games, the resigning minister confided during a reception organised in Paris by the German embassy that he did not see a quick solution to the political crisis. He was still far from suspecting that he could replace Séjourné, who made no secret of his intention to stay after barely eight months in office.
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