The new Elysée chief of staff, Pierre-André Imbert (center), at the Choose France summit at the Château de Versailles, May 15, 2023. ELIOT BLONDET/REA
Pierre-André Imbert is back. After serving two and a half years as France's ambassador to Australia, this senior civil servant will take up the post of Elysée chief of staff on May 4. He succeeds Emmanuel Moulin, who is seeking to head the Banque de France, the country's central bank.
Pierre-André Imbert is the first chief of staff to the president not to have attended the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) since Pierre Bérégovoy (1981-1982). Now 57, Imbert has had an atypical career. The son of a doctor and a police commissioner, with a degree in labor economics and social policy, he became politically active at a young age. Within the scientific committee of the alter-globalization group Attac, he advocated for causes such as the 35-hour workweek and decentralizing collective bargaining. In 1999, he co-authored Attac. Contre la dictature des marchés ("Attac. Against the Dictatorship of the Markets") with Bernard Cassen and Liêm Hoang-Ngoc.
A member of the Movement of Young Socialists and later of the Socialist Party's national council, he began his career in 1997 working alongside Henri Emmanuelli, then chair of the Assemblée Nationale's Finance Committee.
You have 75.05% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.