While his name was being considered for the Armed Forces or Foreign Affairs, this former DGSE employee, who had announced that he was leaving the political world, will join the Prime Minister’s office as a “special advisor”.
He was expected to take on a more sovereign portfolio. But it is ultimately at Matignon that the former European deputy, Arnaud Danjean, will land in a very political position of “special advisor”. “The Prime Minister asks me to provide him, on all subjects he considers useful, with a political and personal assessment which he will do with as he wishes but which is based on a trust that has been proven for more than twenty years.explains to the Figaro this 53-year-old man who had nevertheless ended his political career after the end of his mandate in Strasbourg following the European elections in June. It could be a very political issue, a European issue, a defence issue, etc. It is a flexible mission at the total discretion of Michel Barnier.”
Expected to join the Quai d’Orsay or the Armed Forces, this specialist in defence issues – he was notably posted for the DGSE in the Balkans during and after the war in Bosnia – is supposed to provide political support to a head of government who will have to compromise between several components of the presidential camp but also resist presidential ambitions within LR. “He contacted me quite quickly after his appointment, like many former colleagues, because Michel Barnier is a loyal man.”adds in this interview the one who has already accompanied the new host of Matignon in a ministerial office, it was in 2005, where he was in charge of the Balkans and Afghanistan.
A cabinet with the appearance of a pre-Macron right
Regional councilor in Burgundy between 2010 and 2015, the native of Saône-et-Loire also says he wants to make his contribution “very provincial anchoring, so as not to be a prisoner of a Parisian prism which is sometimes excessive among political leaders”. “In all the roles I have held, whether at the Ministry of Defense, as a European elected official or a local elected official in Burgundy, I have always tried to reconcile, with pragmatism, a strategic approach and taking into account the realities on the ground.he insists. I think, modestly, that this ability to never lock oneself in the comfort of a somewhat isolated inner circle can be useful to a public official.”
While waiting for the announcement of the next government, promised by Michel Barnier for the coming week, the Prime Minister is, in any case, putting together a cabinet that looks like a recomposition of a pre-Macronian right. In addition to the chief of staff, Jérôme Fournel – who worked in the Raffarin and Villepin cabinets before joining Gérald Darmanin at Bercy in 2017 and then Bruno Le Maire at the beginning of this year – and the former prefect of Paris and former interministerial delegate for major sporting events, Michel Cadot, who joined as an advisor – and who was chief of staff to Michèle Alliot-Marie and Brice Hortefeux at Beauvau – the head of the next government has chosen Romain Marleix (son of the former minister Alain Marleix and brother of the former boss of the LR deputies, Olivier Marleix) to assume the strategic role of parliamentary advisor. A small world.
