At just 33 years old, Antoine Armand was appointed Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry, taking over from Bruno Le Maire in this strategic position.
Antoine Armand, a young rising star in French politics, is part of the renewal led by Emmanuel Macron since 2017. A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure and the École Nationale d’Administration, Armand also embodies a generation that combines advanced academic training and early political commitment.
A dazzling career
Born on September 10, 1991 in Paris, Antoine Armand distinguished himself during his studies by joining the École normale supérieure (ENS), then the École nationale d’administration (ENA), two prestigious institutions that train the elite of French leaders. After his studies, he began in 2019 as a financial inspector, a key position within Bercy, where he acquired a detailed knowledge of the economic and budgetary workings of the State.
He entered politics in 2017, when he joined forces with Emmanuel Macron, who was then beginning to build the “En Marche” movement. In 2021, Armand became the party’s departmental leader in his home region, Haute-Savoie, a land to which he is deeply attached through his family roots. In 2022, he was elected deputy for the 2nd constituency of Haute-Savoie, under the label of the presidential majority, thus confirming his status as a young hope for Macronism. He was re-elected in 2024, consolidating his national influence in the process.
A specialization in energy and reindustrialization
Beyond his rapid political rise, Antoine Armand has made a name for himself thanks to his expertise on energy issues, an area in which he has been involved since the beginning of his term as a Member of Parliament. In 2022, he became rapporteur of the Commission of Inquiry into the loss of energy sovereignty in France, a hot topic in the context of the energy crisis that hit the country. Armand worked hand in hand with LR MP Raphaël Schellenberger, succeeding in making this commission an important platform for the rehabilitation of nuclear power in France. His report, which dates back to decisions taken as early as the 1990s, highlights the strategic errors and hesitations that led to the loss of energy control in France. This work, marked by the hearing of many influential figures, including several former Presidents of the Republic, had a considerable impact and positioned Armand as a central figure on the energy issue in France.
Building on this success, he published in 2024 The French Energy Walla book that draws lessons from his work and proposes solutions to regain true energy sovereignty, in particular by focusing on nuclear power. Armand then positions himself as an ardent defender of this technology, which he sees as an essential pillar of the ecological transition and the reindustrialization of the country.
The legacy of a prestigious family
While Antoine Armand is known for his skills and his positions, his name also echoes a prestigious family heritage. He is indeed the great-grandson of Louis Armand, an emblematic figure of the Resistance and a major player in the reindustrialization of post-war France. Louis Armand was notably president of the SNCF, where he played a key role in the electrification of the railway network, but also president of Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Agency, and co-author of the famous Armand-Rueff report of 1960 which called for a liberation of the French economy.
This lineage is not only symbolic: Antoine Armand fully claims this heritage and has even founded an association in memory of his ancestor. This link with Louis Armand reinforces his legitimacy when he speaks on the major industrial and energy issues of France, because he embodies a certain continuity in the defense of national independence, whether through nuclear power or industrial modernization.
A pragmatic minister, rooted in reality
As the new Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry, Antoine Armand arrives with a clear vision: that of a reindustrialization necessary to strengthen France’s competitiveness. Convinced that industrial recovery is the key to economic sovereignty, he advocates a policy of administrative simplification and debureaucratization. For Armand, it is crucial to facilitate the creation and development of companies while reducing the burdens on them.
The new Minister of Economy and Finance, Antoine Armand, has thus made it known that excluding “automatically certain exceptional and targeted levies would not be responsible” given the state of French public finances. Promising that the middle classes would be “supported”, he also refused to make tax increases a “doctrine” while at the same time calling for “reducing public spending and making it more efficient” to generate the billions of euros of savings needed to restore public accounts.
At the same time, Armand is critical of certain forms of ecological activism that he considers too radical. For him, ecology must be pragmatic and oriented towards concrete results, rather than symbolic actions or sterile protest movements. In his book, for example, he denounces the actions of activists blocking roads or throwing paint on institutions, which he considers counterproductive. In his eyes, only a “rational and industrial” ecology can reconcile environmental protection and economic growth.
