From Vernon to Matignon, Sébastien Lecornu in six dates

At 39, Norman Sébastien Lecornu will be leaving the Hôtel de Brienne for Matignon. The outgoing Minister of the Armed Forces was appointed Prime Minister on Tuesday, September 9, by Emmanuel Macron, just hours after François Bayrou's resignation.

Libération looks back at the rise of the native of Eaubonne (Val-d'Oise), appointed Prime Minister at the age of 39.

Young Sébastien Lecornu is a man of the right. Since 2008, he has been the UMP candidate in the municipal elections of Vernon, in Eure. In November 2012, while a candidate, he gave an interview to the newspaper Vernon politique which questioned the right-wing candidates campaigning for the municipal elections on the subject of marriage for all. The local media wrote: "He is logically opposed to the government's project. He believes that the text "mixes too many things for the debate to be calm . " Above all, he opposes adoption, and wants to preserve as it is “an institution that cannot be reduced to a tax regime”: “marriage is in our societies the basis for building a family. And a family is built between a man and a woman…” While he said he was “hostile to medically assisted procreation and surrogacy” in 2015, he also seemed to have changed his mind in 2019 : “I am in favor of the provision as it will be introduced into the law, it was also a presidential program. […] If I had not agreed, I would not have entered the government.”

In 2013, he was co-director of Bruno Le Maire 's campaign for the presidency of the UMP.

From May 2013 to October 2014, Lecornu was the national secretary of the UMP. In the meantime, in March 2014, he finally won the Vernon mayoralty. He was subsequently elected president of the Eure departmental council in 2015. With the 2017 presidential election looming, Lecornu campaigned for the right-wing party Les Républicains . He was the deputy director of François Fillon's team. But Lecornu was backing the wrong horse: candidate Fillon was in turmoil over suspicions of fictitious employment involving his wife Penelope.

On June 21, 2017, Sébastien Lecornu was appointed Secretary of State to Nicolas Hulot , Minister of Ecological and Inclusive Transition in Edouard Philippe's second government. He was the youngest member of the government. The LR party did not welcome his appointment. Disciplinary exclusion proceedings were launched against him, before he was expelled from the party, along with Gérald Darmanin, a member of the government himself, and parliamentarians Franck Riester and Thierry Solère . He joined the presidential party on November 25, 2017.

Following the ministerial reshuffle of the Philippe II government, Sébastien Lecornu was appointed Minister for Local Authorities under Jacqueline Gourault , Minister for Territorial Cohesion and Relations with Local Authorities.

In 2019, as the Yellow Vest crisis escalated, Macron tasked Sébastien Lecornu and Emmanuelle Wargon with leading the national debate. During the first session, held in Grand-Bourgtheroulde in the Eure department, he warmed up the debate room and distributed the speakers by passing the microphone around to the audience. In 2020, he became Minister of Overseas Territories in Jean Castex's government.

On May 20, 2022, he succeeded Florence Parly and became Minister of the Armed Forces in Elisabeth Borne's government. He was 35 years old at the time. This made him the youngest holder of this ministerial portfolio since 1792, and Pierre Auguste Lajard, an officer of the Ancien Régime, a figure of the French Revolution, who served as Minister of War for a few months.

Lecornu resisted multiple reshuffles and presented the military programming law , his baby, in April 2023. Enjoying a good relationship with the army, he was reappointed to successive governments. That of Gabriel Attal, that of Michel Barnier – where he took up the cause of Veterans –, then in that of François Bayrou. In the fall of 2024, he was already tipped for the post of Prime Minister to replace Michel Barnier, who had been ousted by a motion of censure tabled by LFI. Finally, it was the mayor of Pau who won the precious sesame. For a few months only.