Renaissance MP for Haute-Savoie, Antoine Armand was appointed by Michel Barnier to take the reins of the Bercy ministry.
He succeeds Bruno Le Maire. Antoine Armand officially becomes, this Saturday, September 21, Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry, in Michel Barnier’s government.
Great-grandson of the senior civil servant and resistance fighter Louis Armand, the Haute-Savoie native first trained at the École Normale Supérieure and then the École Nationale d’Administration. “I studied History, Economics and Public Law there, which serve as my compasses every day in my mandate,” he explains on his presentation blog.
The official announcement of the composition of Michel Barnier’s government
Committed to Macron since 2017
After graduating from the ENA, he explains that he trained alongside “prefects, diplomats and in a company in the energy sector” then at the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) to work on “industrial issues, on the management of the Covid-19 crisis but also on energy transition issues such as the phase-out of thermal vehicles”
In 2017, Antoine Armand joined Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign and became the departmental representative of LREM in Haute-Savoie. During the second campaign in 2022, the latter claims to have “participated in the design of Emmanuel Macron’s project for his re-election in 2022, in particular on economic and ecological issues”.
In 2022, Antoine Armand was elected deputy for the 2nd constituency of Haute-Savoie, under the label of the partisan coalition Ensemble. A position that he easily regained once again last July: he was re-elected with 68.83% of the votes against the candidate of the National Rally (RN), Anis Bouvard.
More energy specialist than economist
In October 2022, Antoine Armand was appointed rapporteur of a parliamentary commission of inquiry “aimed at establishing the reasons for France’s loss of sovereignty and energy independence”. At the end of the work in April 2023, a 4,000-page report made it possible to formulate 30 recommendations, all adopted by the various members of the commission.
Latest feat: Antoine Armand was president of the Economic Affairs Committee at the National Assembly in July 2024. Which could have played a major role in Michel Barnier’s choice.
Because a priori, this profile is suited to the ministerial management of issues relating to Energy or industrial sovereignty. Issues that have been attached to the Ministry of the Economy since January 2024. It remains to be seen whether Michel Barnier has kept this division of tasks.
