During her handover of power on Tuesday 9 January, Élisabeth Borne said she was delighted "to continue to serve" her country, by joining the Palais-Bourbon as MP for Calvados. A mandate she won in 2022, but which she never exercised. Moving from the head of government to parliamentarian: the pattern is not new. Fifteen prime ministers have already had this experience (thirteen in the Assembly, two exclusively in the Senate).
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"Depending on the moment, the ambitions, the balance of power, the scenarios are very different," observes historian Jean Garrigues, president of the Committee for Parliamentary and Political History (CHPP), who recalls that when he resigned from Matignon in 1976, Jacques Chirac became the leader of the presidential majority in the Assembly, a "stepping stone for his career". Or Laurent Fabius, who was still "very young" when he returned to the Assembly in 1986 at the age of 40. "It's more often a retreat, a moment of transition to erasure," he adds.
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