Since the announcement of the resignation of Élisabeth Borne on Monday, hypotheses regarding the composition of the future government have been rife. Maud Fontenoy is the subject of one of them.
Maud Fontenoy expected to join Gabriel Attal’s government? In its columns, Wednesday January 10, the weekly Current Values mentioned the name of this sailor and environmental activist, once vice-president (LR) of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regional council in charge of Sustainable Development, Energy and the Sea. According to information from VA, two options are possible. Maud Fontenoy could thus be offered the position of Secretary of State for the Sea, replacing Hervé Berville, in office since July 4, 2022, or be promoted to the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
However, this is not the first time that the name of Maud Fontenoy has been mentioned during a reshuffle. In 2007, as recalled The Parisian, the sailor then aged 30 had hesitated to join the government as Secretary of State for Youth after the election of Nicolas Sarkozy. Although she ultimately did not take the plunge, she said, a few years later, in 2015, that she was ready to join the Ministry of the Environment in 2017 if Nicolas Sarkozy was re-elected president. “If he wants to put in place a real environmental program, which I believe; if he holds this major conference on the environment at the start of the year as is the project, if my proposals are studied and if he returns to power and gives me the opportunity to act, yes I will go”, said on iTélé the one who at the time had joined Les Républicains a few months earlier, reminds us of the Sunday newspaper.
Who is Maud Fontenoy?
Icon of the sea, Maud Fontenoy made a name for herself at the age of 25 by becoming the first woman to cross the North Atlantic… by oar. If she has other maritime exploits to her name, the sailor is also known to have been a faithful follower of Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom she sometimes played the role of ecological guarantor. At the head of a foundation which “is committed in France and around the world to preserving the oceans”, she has regularly carried out educational activities on the marine environment, sometimes in partnership with the Ministry of National Education. But his publication, in 2013, of Fed up with the ecologistsa work in which she does not hesitate to defend a “pragmatic” ecology, even praising shale gas, an “ecological asset”, will put her at the heart of the controversy.
In 2014, his positions for scientific research on nuclear power, GMOs and even pesticides also earned him numerous criticisms from environmentalists. However, in 2019, Jean-Michel Blanquer, then Minister of National Education, appointed her “Ambassador of sea classes to the Ministry of National Education and Youth”. Can we see there a first link with Macronie, before an imminent arrival in the government of Gabriel Attal? After leaving the vice-presidency of the regional council of the PACA region in 2021, Maud Fontenoy nevertheless seemed to want to draw a line under her political life. “When you get involved in politics, even from afar, you trigger lightning. You are made to say anything. Faced with the importance of the issues, political wars sickened me,” she said, as reported in February 2022 Paris Match.