A divisive Macronist from the right, the head of the Renaissance deputies Aurore Bergé fought for a long time to land a government post, until her appointment Thursday to the Ministry of Solidarity and Families, at 36 years old.
She succeeds Jean-Christophe Combe, who came from civil society and who had difficulty finding his place in government.
“It is the recognition of his commitment and the work that has been his in the group”, according to the entourage of Emmanuel Macron. In particular, it will have to implement the payment of social benefits at source and will be eagerly awaited on the issue of old age and autonomy.
At ease on television sets to carry the blow against the Insoumis or the RN, Aurore Bergé has imposed herself on the front line of the macronie since her election in the Yvelines in 2017, after a course on the right.
LFI reacted strongly to his appointment, accusing him of having been “deaf to any opposition” in the Assembly.
The deputy has often hoped to enter the government, for example in Culture, a subject dear to this daughter of actors – her father is the French voice of Sylvester Stallone. Until shedding a few tears during a rally of majority deputies in Matignon in July 2020, for not having been named in the government of Jean Castex.
After her broad re-election in the June 2022 legislative elections, she had led an “offensive” campaign for the presidency of the Renaissance group, according to a colleague.
In this position, she has often assumed sharp positions or even media blows, at the risk of upsetting her allies in the majority Horizons and Modem, who are sometimes taken aback.
It had not been followed by defending a bill, rejected, aimed at extending the penalty of ineligibility to more perpetrators of violence: a law of “circumstance” and “opportunist” criticized its detractors, launched to react to the conviction of the deputy LFI Adrien Quatennens for violence on his partner.
“She has the quality of her faults”, sweeps support within the group. “She erased five years of Playmobil deputies”.
Relations were deemed tense with the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, whom she criticized for being too friendly with the opposition.
At the Assembly, Aurore Bergé was initially particularly involved in cultural issues, in particular public broadcasting.
She also claims her feminist commitment, at the forefront of demanding the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution. She backed a left-wing constitutional bill, which got a first green light in the Assembly but has since been held up to the fate of a possible broader revision of the Basic Law.
The macronist also defends a strict vision of secularism, close to that of the former Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer or the former Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
In October 2019, she created controversy in her camp, saying she was ready to vote on a bill by Eric Ciotti (LR) on the ban on the veil for school attendants.
In politics, his successive affinities, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Fillon, Alain Juppé then Emmanuel Macron, earned him a reputation as ambitious, even opportunist.
But Aurore Bergé, engaged very young on the right, has always claimed to follow the same “liberal, progressive, feminist and European” guideline.
She began her militant life in 2002 when the UMP was founded. In 2010, the Sciences Po Paris graduate tried unsuccessfully to take over the presidency of “Jeunes Pop'”, the party’s youth organization.
In 2013, she took a stand for marriage for all and attracted a lot of criticism in her camp.
After a failure in the 2014 municipal elections in Magny-Les-Hameaux (Yvelines), she joined Alain Juppé’s close guard during the primary in 2016, before joining that of Emmanuel Macron in February 2017 and then winning the legislative elections in the 10th district of Yvelines.
As a young mother, Aurore Bergé is very present on social networks, after a career as a private communicator for the Spintank and then Hopscotch agencies.
His appointment will lead to an election at the head of the Renaissance group. Vice-president Sylvain Maillard has already announced his candidacy.
07/20/2023 20:40:34 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
