The Council of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) must decide this Thursday, September 19 between the three candidates in the running for the direction of the institution. The following day, the National Foundation of Political Sciences (FNSP) will also decide. If the two bodies reach an agreement, the name of the new director will be submitted to the Ministry of Higher Education for final validation.
Rostane Mehdi, already the director of a Sciences Po
Born in Algiers in 1965, Rostane Mehdi has been a professor of public law at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Aix-Marseille since 1996. He obtained his Master’s degree in law in 1988. He has also taught at the College of Europe in Bruges since 2002.
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Since 2001, Rostane Mehdi has held certain national responsibilities. From 2001 to 2004, the professor chaired the Commission for the Study of the European Communities. From 2007 to 2010, this author of around a hundred articles on European Union law was appointed scientific delegate coordinator with the Agency for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education.
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In 2009, Rostane Mehdi was appointed director of the CNRS Joint Research Unit “International, Comparative and European Law”. He held these positions until 2015, when he was appointed director of Sciences Po Aix, a position he still holds to this day.
Arancha Gonzalez, the former minister
Arancha Gonzalez was born in 1969 in San Sebastian, Spain. A student at the University of Navarra until 1992, Arancha Gonzalez entered the Carlos III University in Madrid and graduated with a Master’s degree in European Law in 1993. In 1996, after starting a career in the private sector as a partner in a law firm, she held several positions at the European Commission, specialising in the field of external relations and development, until 2005.
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Between 2005 and 2013, Arancha Gonzalez served as Chief of Staff to the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and his representative to the G-20. She then became Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and took over as Executive Director of the International Trade Center until 2020. Arancha Gonzalez then joined the Spanish government and served for 1 year and seven months until July 2021 as Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain.
In March 2022, Arancha Gonzalez was appointed Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, becoming the first woman to hold this position. Since March 2023, the former Spanish minister has also been a member of the board of directors of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Arancha Gonzalez describes herself as passionate about international, geopolitical and economic relations, a convinced multilateralist, an activist for women’s emancipation and a proud European.
Luis Vassy, the ENA graduate
Born in 1980 to a Uruguayan political refugee father and an Argentinian mother, Luis Vassy was naturalized French at the age of two. After obtaining a scientific baccalaureate at the Lycée Louis le Grand, Luis Vassy entered Sciences Po. From 1999 to 2001, he studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan before passing the ENA competitive exam in 2002. After a stint as an editor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Luis Vassy held various positions at the French Embassy in the United States, including that of spokesperson.
In 2012, Luis Vassy became deputy diplomatic advisor in the office of the Ministry of Defense. Following the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017, the ENA graduate became deputy director of the office of the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, where he worked for Marielle de Sarnez and Nathalie Loiseau. In July 2019, Luis Vassy became French ambassador to the Netherlands, a position he will hold until 2022. Since then, he has been director of the office of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, working for Stéphane Séjourné.
