The former minister of Jacques Chirac had been approached to occupy Matignon in 2022. Catherine Vautrin arrives in the government today at the head of a new Ministry of Social Affairs.
The arrival of Catherine Vautrin in the government is a further sign of its right-wing. The current president of the Greater Reims metropolis, aged 63, has spent her entire career in the ranks of the right, since joining the RPR in 1980. She takes the head of a super ministry bringing together the Labor portfolios , Health and Solidarity. A nice consolation prize for the one who had been cited to lead the government in 2022. A look back at her career.
After studying law, Catherine Vautrin worked for several years within the Cigna insurance group, before turning to politics. An RPR activist since her youth, she joined the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin in 2004. She successively held the positions of Secretary of State for Integration and Equal Opportunities, Secretary of State for People elderly and Minister for Social Cohesion and Equality.
It is therefore with experience in the executive branch and in positions related to social affairs that Catherine Vautrin joins Gabriel Attal’s team. She also served in the Assembly for ten years as a deputy for Marne, under the colors of the UMP then LR. She distanced herself from this party from 2017, before supporting Emmanuel Macron in February 2022. The latter was able to remember this a few months later, during his negotiations for the position of head of government .
His past at the Manif pour tous resurfaces
Catherine Vautrin was thus given as the favorite to take over from Edouard Philippe at Matignon in May 2022. But this was without counting on an outcry within the presidential camp: in question, her ostensible opposition to the law on marriage for homosexual couples in 2013 and his diligent participation in the Manif pour tous. Although the former minister had said she regretted her past positions, Emmanuel Macron had ultimately preferred Elisabeth Borne.
Catherine Vautrin finally made her return to the executive on Thursday January 11, by sucking three ministries into one. A proof of the confidence placed in him by the President of the Republic. But this appointment does not please everyone: associations defending LGBT+ rights have expressed their concern, while left-wing elected officials questioned the capacity of the new minister to include the right to voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the Constitution.
And for good reason, in 2017, Catherine Vautrin had seized the Constitutional Council with other LR deputies to try to counter a law to fight against anti-propaganda.IVG. The new bill on the constitutionalization of abortion, which arrives at the Assembly at the end of January, will however be carried by the Minister of Justice, and not by the Minister of Health.
Catherine Vautrin’s former positions on the end of life – she opposed “active euthanasia” procedures in 2005 in the debates on the Leonetti law – also raise questions, while a law must be unveiled on the subject by his ministry in February.