What, a whole book about a living room? Yes, but what a room! Marie-Béatrice Baudet, senior reporter at World, and historian David Gaillardon investigated the green room of the Elysée, named so because of the dominant color of its walls, an initiative of Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, in contrast to the yellow chosen in the other rooms. The place of all intrigues, “of all plots”, according to Arnaud Montebourg, who led a desperate battle there against the sale of Alstom. A pivotal room, adjoining the office of the President of the Republic, an uncertain room, whose use each head of state modifies at will.
Under the Fourth Republic, the salon served as accommodation for the collaborators of foreign governments on official visits to France. De Gaulle, who did not like the Elysée, took over the place for his own aides-de-camp. Giscard d’Estaing abandoned the area in favor of the “East Wing” of the palace. The place regained its luster under François Mitterrand, when Jacques Attali made it his office and the salon for all gossip, as at the king’s court. Chirac transformed the green salon into a meeting room, Sarkozy married Carla Bruni there, like Gaston Doumergue seventy-three years before him, Hollande held his defense councils there, after each participant had gotten rid of their cell phone. The room is regularly inspected to check that microphones have not been planted there, we learned from Alain Juillet, the former director of intelligence at the DGSE.
Monarchical decorum
Under Emmanuel Macron, the green room no longer hosts classified meetings, which have been moved to the Jupiter PC, in the basement of the Elysée, but it remains this influential room where important interviews are held and decisive decisions are made. On August 28, 2018, Nicolas Hulot resigned from his post as Minister of Ecological Transition the day after a meeting on the hunt for the green room. He was surprised to meet lobbyist Thierry Coste there, more boastful than ever, giving the impression of having tied everything up in his absence.
On January 11, 2024, the president still receives his 14 ministers there, packed in a row around a tiny table in front of the cameras, for a staging of the new government in the style of a rugby scrum. With its history and decorum, the green room serves as a reminder that the Fifth Republic is particularly suited to monarchical symbols, and also to the spirit of the court. At the risk that the head of state himself might sometimes be mistaken.
The Green Room, by Marie-Béatrice Baudet and David Gaillardon. Grasset, 144 p., €16.