Boris Ravigon's candidacy for the head of Ademe rejected by Parliament in committee, a first

The appointment of Boris Ravignon, Les Républicains (LR) mayor of Charleville-Mézières, as head of the Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe), the ecological transition agency, was challenged Wednesday, April 12 by parliamentarians. This is the first time that a candidacy proposed by the Elysée, at Ademe or elsewhere, has been rejected since the introduction of this procedure in the Constitution, in 2018.

In total, thirty-two parliamentarians voted in favor and fifty-seven voted against, i.e. more than three-fifths required under the Constitution to oppose an appointment proposed by the President of the Republic, at the end of the Hearing of Mr. Ravignon before the Committee on Sustainable Development and Regional Planning of the National Assembly, Wednesday morning.

Support for Emmanuel Macron in 2022

Mr. Ravignon was appointed by Emmanuel Macron last December to act as interim head of the structure due to the resignation of the current president, Arnaud Leroy. This appointment was validated on December 14 by parliamentarians, despite a majority of votes cast against, but without three-fifths being reached.

But following the renewal of Ademe’s board of directors on February 14 and the official end of Mr. Leroy’s mandate, Mr. Ravignon’s appointment had to be reconfirmed by parliamentarians.

During the morning debates, deputies and senators notably criticized Mr. Ravignon for his refusal to resign from his mandate as mayor following his first appointment to Ademe. Mr. Ravignon had argued, Wednesday morning, “the interest of staying in contact with the field” to better fulfill his mission, stressing that this was “legal” and had “already happened in the past”.

“The accumulation of a national agency with the post of Mayor of a city of 50,000 inhabitants is just not reasonable”, explained on Twitter the deputy of the National Rally Nicolas Dragon, who took part in the vote.

The Senate’s Regional Planning and Sustainable Development Committee castigated the procedure carried out by the government, its president, Jean-François Longeot, UDI senator from Doubs, even describing as “ubuesque” the fact of having to hear Mr. Ravignon for the second time in barely four months. “This vote reflects Parliament’s dissatisfaction with such unpreparedness, a further manifestation of the executive’s lack of consideration for it,” the senators said in a statement.

In April 2022, the mayor of Charleville-Mézières had given his support to Emmanuel Macron against the LR candidate, Valérie Pécresse, for the presidential election. The two men, both enarques, worked together at the general inspection of finances in Bercy, before Boris Ravignon joined Nicolas Sarkozy, then interior minister, then he became mayor of Charleville-Mézières in 2014.