Aurore Bergé, July 29, 2024 in Paris (AFP / STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN)
A personality as media-friendly as it is divisive, the deputy and former minister Aurore Bergé, who will be the subject of a report to the courts for “false testimony”, is an influential Macronist and recognized for her talents as a communicator, but whose star seems to have faded since the dissolution.
At 37, the Yvelines MP, from the right, is indicted for comments made under oath as minister, on April 30, before a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the economic model of crèches. The left accuses him of having lied on this occasion about his links with a lobbyist for private daycare centers – which Ms. Bergé denies.
Since her election to the National Assembly in 2017, this former professional communicator, comfortable on television sets delivering blows against the Insoumis or the RN, had established herself on the front line of the macronie, even if it meant force a few doors.
Until becoming president of her political group at the Palais Bourbon, from June 2022 to July 2023, then minister, until September 2024.
Having become a “simple” deputy again since the formation of the Barnier government, she does not occupy any particular position in the group led by Gabriel Attal, with whom relations have been refreshed, as illustrated in particular by the choice of Ms. Bergé to support Elisabeth Borne, rather than Mr. Attal, for head of the Renaissance party.
She remains “a media MP, known, recognized for her work and her commitment”, but “she is today an MP with the same weight as all the others” within the EPR group, comments her colleague to AFP Prisca Thevenot, former spokesperson for the Attal government.
Her time in government, which she had openly called for – she will first be responsible for Solidarity and Families, then from January 2024 for Equality between women and men – has “devitalized” her, estimates one other member. Since then, in the Assembly, “his star has faded”, adds this elected official.
During the previous legislature, this daughter of actors – her father, recently deceased, was the French voice of Sylvester Stallone – regularly took sharp positions, even media stunts, at the risk of upsetting her allies in the then majority , Horizons and Modem elected officials sometimes taken by surprise.
– Liberal and feminist –
Described by her peers as “very, very divisive”, “authoritarian”, “self-promoting”, or “only serving her friends”, this “political professional” was also praised by other elected officials who recognized in him “talent” and a “grip”, a “bit of a bulldozer” ability to “hold the group together”. She “knows how to decide quickly and well, and is very courageous”, underlined one elected official.
In October 2019, she created controversy in her camp, saying she was ready to vote for a bill from Eric Ciotti (then LR, but now allied to the National Rally) on the ban on the veil for school chaperones.
Before joining Emmanuel Macron in 2017, her successive affinities – for Nicolas Sarkozy, François Fillon and Alain Juppé – had already earned her a reputation as ambitious, even opportunist.
The Macronist, trained at Sciences Po Paris and committed to the right at a very young age, also defends a strict vision of secularism.
As Minister responsible for Equality between Women and Men, she tensed up when discussing the idea of cutting subsidies to feminist associations having made “ambiguous comments” on the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 . Before recognizing that no association financed by the State could be open to such criticism.
The episode left its mark among feminist activists, some having “badly experienced” this “bad trial” and this way of “sowing doubt” about their commitment, analyzes the president of the Women’s Foundation, Anne-Cécile Mailfert.
But Aurore Bergé has always claimed to follow the same guideline, “liberal” and “European”, but also “feminist” and “progressive”. In 2013, she took a position for marriage for all, going against the majority of her camp. And her commitment to including the right to abortion in the Constitution was appreciated among women’s rights defenders, underlines Ms. Mailfert.
