A survivor. Nine months ago, when the Attal government was being formed, Agnès Pannier-Runacher almost jumped for having rubbed shoulders, in Clément Beaune’s apartments, with some of her fellow ministers who were threatening to slam the door because they were opposed to the immigration law and its right-wing additions, introduced by LR but accepted by Gérald Darmanin and Elisabeth Borne. The former Minister of Energy Transition was rescued at the last minute and placed on a strapontin in Agriculture, under the supervision of Modem Marc Fesneau.
The resurrection is rapid: in this Barnier government, Agnès Pannier-Runacher is propelled to Ecological Transition, Energy, Climate and Risk Prevention to replace Christophe Béchu who becomes mayor of Angers (Maine-et-Loire) again. The right-wing elected official (Horizons) will not have been able to defend the political object he had chosen, namely the third climate change adaptation plan, supposed to prepare France to face a 4°C increase at the end of the century. This file, completed but never presented to the French, “will be on top of the pile for my successor”Béchu hoped in an interview with Western Mail Thursday September 19.
Totally opposed to the abolition of AME
The one who says “left” is supposed, like Didier Migaud at Justice, to rebalance the very right-wing aspect of this new government. In its media interventions preceding the nominations, “APR” recalled, for example, its total opposition to the suppression of State medical aid (AME), as LR wants: “Removing it would be useless in the fight against illegal immigration and dangerous for hospitals and the health of the French people.”she declared for example on TF1 on September 13. During the same interview, she also opposed additional taxation of EDF: “What’s in it for the climate? Why tax nuclear power?”
It remains to be seen whether the Pas-de-Calais MP, elected in a duel against the National Rally thanks to the withdrawal of an environmentalist, will have enough political weight to counter the extremist wishes of her new bench comrades in the areas of education or with regard to immigrants.
Prevent further green budget cuts
In government since 2018 (she started with an undefined position as Secretary of State at Bercy), Agnès Pannier-Runacher is therefore returning to Roquelaure, where she had made a first stint from 2022 to 2024, as Minister of Energy Transition, in a duo with Christophe Béchu, in what was then a large two-headed ministry. Alone at the helm, with Energy in her portfolio which is making its return to Boulevard Saint-Germain after being moved to Bercy in January, the ENA graduate (same promotion as the Secretary General of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler) will have to tackle files with decisive arbitrations.
The new minister, who has a reputation for knowing how to move her issues forward and had said in 2022 that she would give herself the mission of “getting France out of fossil fuels”will have a few days to try to prevent new green budget cuts before the presentation of the draft finance bill for 2025. Will she succeed in convincing Michel Barnier, who was Minister of the Environment between 1993 and 1995, to tackle the “ecological debt” of France as he had declared on the evening of his arrival at Matignon? Or will it be condemned by austerity to be one of the weak links in a government oblivious to the ecological peril?
Essential Roadmaps
The rest of the green agenda will be just as busy. In addition to the adaptation plan, Agnès Pannier-Runacher will have to tackle the multi-year energy programming (which sets the development targets for renewable energies and nuclear power, for example) and the third national low-carbon strategy (which establishes the trajectory for reducing greenhouse gas emissions), two essential roadmaps. Will the new executive want to pass a major energy-climate programming law including all the country’s objectives or will the project be definitively abandoned? The minister will also have to prepare two major events to come before the end of the year: COP 29 in Azerbaijan, as well as COP 16 biodiversity in Colombia.
On Saturday afternoon, during the Social Ecology Meetings in Beaucouzé (Maine-et-Loire), Agnès Pannier-Runacher outlined her roadmap: “We need to manage to construct this discourse and this narrative which reconciles the end of the world and the end of the month”, “showing that purchasing power can coincide with ecology.” With colleagues some of whom flirt with climate skepticism, it will take more than words.
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