The new Secretary of State for European Affairs has followed in the footsteps of Emmanuel Macron.
Laurence Boone, 53, succeeded him at the Elysée in 2014 when the current head of state officiated for François Hollande, the socialist president who had designated
"finance"
as his
"enemy"
.
She had resumed the function of economic adviser and assumed the same realistic, “social-liberal” trajectory, which had strangled the radical left.
She also shared with him the experience of finance.
Emmanuel Macron had worked for the Rothschild bank.
Laurence Boone for Bank of America-Merryll Lynch and for Barclays.
Emmanuel Macron and Laurence Boone then rubbed shoulders regularly, after the appointment of the latter to the post of Minister of the Economy a few weeks later.
They know each other perfectly.
Finance, Europe and macro-economy hold no secrets for Laurence Boone.
After her PhD in economics in London, she worked at the Center for Prospective Studies and International Information, then at the OECD, then in the investment bank where she scrutinized the workings of the European Central Bank... After the Élysée, which she left in 2016, and a stint at AXA and on the board of directors of the Kering group, she returned to the OECD in 2018 in the prestigious position of chief economist.
Since January, she has been its deputy general secretary.
His career will be judged without fault, except on the side of rebellious France which advocates European disobedience and refuses budgetary constraints.
She is a recognized economist.
A tireless worker
Laurence Boone knows perfectly how the European Union works.
She notably went through the Greek debt crisis by pleading, with François Hollande, for the maintenance of Athens in the euro zone.
It reconnects with a Union transformed by the double shock of Covid and the war in Ukraine.
She is also experienced in climate issues: she had participated in the negotiations of the Paris Agreement and the financing of COP21.
Those who knew her describe Laurence Boone as a tireless worker, an outstanding teacher and an affable person.
She is a pragmatist and a realist, who pleaded, in the interviews she was able to carry out in recent months, for international taxation but also a reform of French weaknesses, such as the employment rate.
She embodies Emmanuel Macron's European commitment, which she will have to defend against a National Assembly where euroscepticism has progressed.