It's been a year since the replacement of Jean d'Haussonville, director of the Chambord estate, whose mandate ended on December 31, 2022, was on the table, nourishing applications and ambitions.
It was finally Pierre Dubreuil, current president of the French office for Biodiversity, who won the round.
Appointed by the President of the Republic to the Council of Ministers on January 4, he will take office on January 19.
After beginning his professional career in the Prefecture (Eure and Hauts-de-Seine) and at the town hall of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Yvelines), Pierre Dubreuil held several positions in the public sphere, at the National Museum of Natural History , as Secretary General (2001-2012), then Deputy Managing Director (2016-2019), or at Inrap, as Managing Director (2013-2016).
His recent experience around biodiversity will be a plus for the estate, which has a park, a vegetable garden, a forest of more than 4000 hectares, and is committed to a real policy of ecological transition.
Read alsoPierre Dubreuil, a “servant of the State” at the bedside of nature
According to
Paris Influence
, a newsletter dedicated to "
the issues of lobbying and transparency in the corridors of power
", Dubreuil's candidacy was pushed by the lobby of hunters, led by Thierry Costes and senator LREM François Patriat (the latter being a member of the council Board of Directors of Chambord, just like Pierre Dubreuil).
Since its origins, the estate has been a renowned hunter, and 36 control drives are still organized each year.
Any director must be at least "
compatible hunters
", if not fine trigger.
Pierre Dubreuil will find a house in working order, spectacularly modified in twelve years by Jean d'Haussonville.
The outgoing director has carried out rapid reforms there, both in the park and inside the castle, bringing the estate into the restricted club of monuments visited by more than one million visitors (1.053 million in 2022).
Under his direction, and thanks to the increase in the number of visitors, patronage and a policy of concessions, the monument has notably become financially independent.
“
He animated a public institution with an exceptional spirit of enterprise, without making it lose its soul, quite the contrary
,” says
Le Figaro .
, Augustin de Romanet, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Chambord, and also CEO of Aéroports de Paris.
Although Emmanuel Macron's entourage has hinted that the President of the Republic "
had an idea
" for Jean d'Haussonville, the latter is still not fixed on his fate.
Thanks to his record, he would be an asset for a large cultural establishment – he had also applied to take over from Catherine Pgard, at Versailles, before realizing that the position was not finally open.
Coming from the diplomatic corps, he could also claim an embassy.
