Patrick Stefanini was appointed this Friday as special representative of the Minister of the Interior on immigration. This senior official, specialist in the issue, is a Republican figure.
An experienced politician and architect of many victories. The former prefect of Puy-de-Dôme and Gironde and member of the Council of State, Patrick Stefanini, has been appointed special representative of the Minister of the Interior on immigration, Place Beauvau announced this Friday .
Its role will be to negotiate agreements with countries to reduce illegal networks. “This appointment is part of a firm desire of the Minister of the Interior to fight for better control of migratory flows and to strengthen the security of the French,” explains a press release.
“This mission letter is part of a reconquest of France’s sovereignty in matters of migration policy,” the former prefect commented in an interview with Paris Match.
This graduate of the National School of Administration (ENA) has a perfect command of the subject. In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of the Republic, entrusted him with the creation of the Ministry of Immigration and National Identity.
In 2020, he also published the book “Immigration, these realities that are hidden from us”, which takes stock of the last 20 years in this area.
a Figure of the Republicans
Patrick Stefanini, 71, is a major shadowy man on the right. This strategist is often considered a formidable conductor, serving his political family, The Republicans.
Director of Jacques Chirac's victorious presidential campaign in 1995, he was, subsequently, one of Alain Juppé's close advisors at Matignon.
The senior civil servant, originally from Bourg-en-Bresse, will successively lead the campaigns of François Fillon and Valérie Pécresse, for the presidential elections of 2017 then 2022, but also for the regional elections of 2015.
After the success of the latter, in 2015, he was appointed general director of services for the Île-de-France region.
It was only in June 2021 that he was elected departmental councilor of Yvelines after trying his luck in Nice and Paris.
A conviction
In 2004, he was sentenced, alongside Alain Juppé, to 10 months in prison for concealment of illegal taking of interest in the affair of fictitious jobs at Paris town hall in the mid-1990s.
Close to the latter, he nevertheless abandoned him in favor of François Fillon in 2017, before resigning in the face of the scandal of the fictitious jobs affair concerning Penelope Fillon.
A few months later, he testified in his book “Deflagration, in the secret of an impossible election”, written with Carole Barjon. Patrick Stefanini notably tells the story behind the scenes of the right and center primary at the end of 2016 where his foal won, to everyone's surprise. It also reveals the true personality of a man “more devious than he believed”. In July 2010, the man who knew how to bounce back throughout his career was made a knight of the Legion of Honor.
