A survivor of the original Macronism. When Agnès Pannier-Runacher was appointed Secretary of State at Bercy on 16 October 2018, this private sector leader, after passing through the general inspection of finances, was viewed with a bit of contempt by the political professionals. A technocrat without political skills, they whisper.
Six years later, while Richard Ferrand, François Bayrou, Christophe Castaner and Bruno Le Maire have disappeared from government castings, she will be the only personality from the first Macron governments still present at the table of the Council of Ministers.
Appointed on Saturday 21 September to the post of Minister for Ecological Transition, Energy, Climate and Risk Prevention, she was eventually hired by Prime Minister Michel Barnier. In recent weeks, however, she had been one of the central bloc’s voices warning against a right-wing Macronism. “France is not right-wing. I am not the only one who thinks so, many of my colleagues also tell me so.declared to the express on August 8, 2024, advocating a broad alliance that would extend to the left. This is a parallel truth that contaminates the public debate. [La France] It is without a doubt [à droite] in matters of authority, but in economic and social matters, he is left-wing. »
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Initially, Michel Barnier would have liked to choose someone from civil society or a left-wing personality for this post. But Agnès Pannier-Runacher has finally established herself in this major ministry after having multiplied her experiences in government.
At Bercy, she was first in charge of crafts and trade between 2018 and 2020. A position in which this former enarque, a promotional friend of the Secretary General of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler, is forced to deport certain files linked to companies for which she had worked (La Compagnie des Alpes). The same is true for Engie, which employed her husband. As Minister Delegate in charge of Industry between 2020 and 2022, she manages the vaccine purchase plan to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the recovery plan for certain sectors, notably the energy sector.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher, a woman of brief, is known for quickly taking charge of the issues of the sectors for which she is responsible. Heading a ministry for the energy transition from May 2022, she will have to implement President Emmanuel Macron’s new strategy, presented a few months earlier in Belfort. “get the country off fossil fuels”France is betting on both a strong revival of the nuclear sector and the development of renewable energies. In addition to the construction of new reactors, the minister is advocating a highly controversial reform of nuclear safety governance (which will lead to the merger of the Nuclear Safety Authority and the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety) which has not yet been implemented, and is launching a nuclear alliance at European level to promote the atom. At the time, she also took this line to the international level, as she was the one who represented France during the negotiations of the Conferences of the Parties (COP) on climate.
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