He is one of the faithful of the first hour, of those who were present from the beginning of Emmanuel Macron’s presidential adventure in 2016. Thomas Cazenave, 45, was appointed Minister Delegate in charge of public accounts on Thursday July 20 on the occasion of the reshuffle.
He replaces Gabriel Attal, who was promoted to head of the Ministry of Education, within the team of the Ministry of Economy of Bercy, which he knows well. Mr. Cazenave was elected in June 2022 deputy for the 1st constituency of Gironde and will therefore leave the benches of the hemicycle to join the new government team.
Multi-graduate, theoretician of the “start-up nation” and linchpin of the creation of En Marche!, he began his career as a finance inspector upon leaving the ENA, after having accumulated diplomas, at Sciences-Po or at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Economics. It was in 2007 that he met and then befriended Emmanuel Macron, then a finance inspector, within the commission for the release of growth chaired by Jacques Attali.
Reputed to be as good a friend as a technician
After a career in the public sector, notably at Pôle emploi, Thomas Cazenave joined Mr. Macron almost ten years later at the Ministry of the Economy, becoming his deputy chief of staff. While helping to create En Marche! and writing the presidential program of Emmanuel Macron, he was appointed in December 2016 Deputy Secretary General of the Elysée by François Hollande.
In 2017, once Emmanuel Macron was elected President of the Republic, Thomas Cazenave was appointed interministerial delegate for public transformation.
His victory in the legislative elections five years later under the Renaissance label came to wash away a severe debacle he suffered two years earlier in the municipal elections of Bordeaux, when he led the list of the presidential majority which came in third position, barely a point ahead of that of the revolutionary Trotskyist Philippe Poutou. A circumstantial alliance, tied with the fingertips between the two towers with the outgoing Republican candidate, did not prevent the environmental candidate Pierre Hurmic from seizing the town hall.
At the Palais-Bourbon, Deputy Cazenave, a member of the Finance Committee, is reputed to be as good a friend as he is a technician. At the end of June, he was proud to have passed one of his bills on capping rent increases.
Cantor of going beyond and of “and at the same time”, this former close friend of the Socialist Party, father of two children, appeared as a fervent support of Elisabeth Borne at Matignon, of which he saluted his ability “to bring to good port the files entrusted to him”.
