Bayrou Government: Amélie de Montchalin makes her return as Budget Minister

At a time when France is experiencing one of the worst budgetary crises of the Fifth Republic, it now has the difficult task of hastily preparing a budget for 2025 and – even harder – putting the country’s accounts back in the green.

But the mission should please him. Because this is not the first time that this hard worker, who does not count her hours, has gone in search of sources of savings to reduce public accounts. Between 2017 and 2019, it was she who was sent to the fire to pass the technical reforms of the Pacte law (law relating to the growth and transformation of businesses) and to look for ways to save money. His hobby then? The elimination of small tax loopholes. At all costs, she also defends successive budgets, as a “good little soldier” of the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire.

Nicknamed “Homily of Montchalin” by the majority

However, the former coordinator of deputies En marche! to the Finance Commission came out of nowhere. Machine gun flow, needing to show that she knows her files like the back of her hand, she gave us her first interview in October 2017, at the back of a café a stone’s throw from the National Assembly. The young MP, 32 years old at the time, came from the private sector, from Axa, where she was responsible for public affairs.

But very quickly, she took a liking to politics. Which doesn’t please everyone. Indeed, his strict look and his tone of good student irritate in the Hemicycle, even within the majority: certain elected officials from his camp do not hesitate to rename it “Homily of Montchalin”.

However, little by little, this overqualified graduate, having studied at Harvard and HEC, is earning her stripes within Macronie. Rewarded for her good and loyal service, she returned to the government in 2019 as Secretary of State for European Affairs. The following year, she became Minister of Transformation and the civil service before being appointed (then dismissed) in 2022 to the Ecological Transition. This resignation puts an end to the political career of this mother of three children, a practicing Catholic, who then disappears from the political landscape. Before returning through the front door.