Paris, “it has been my commitment of heart and life for more than twenty-five years”, claims the native of Seine-Saint-Denis, 47 years old in December, who spent his adolescence in Charente-Maritime and studied superiors in Bordeaux before returning to the Paris region.
What is his background?
Member of the 12the district of Paris since June 30, he defeated the former Macronist Minister of Transport Clément Beaune in the first round, with 50.87% of the votes. It must be said that he had a solid footing there because it is in this same district where he has been a long-time activist in the Socialist Party (he took his card in 2001), that Emmanuel Grégoire was elected to the municipal elections of 2014, in Anne Hidalgo's team, after having been the chief of staff of the previous mayor, Bertrand Delanoë. Between these two stages, a stint at the Élysée, and especially Matignon, from 2012 to 2014, as chief of staff of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
First deputy to Anne Hidalgo from 2018 to last July, he abandoned this position due to multiple mandates after his election to Parliament. At Paris City Hall, he followed the budget files, the transformation of public policies, and urban planning.
What does he propose?
Emmanuel Grégoire wants to be the “mayor of reconciliation by obsessively taking care of everyday life”. And to mention, in an interview with “Parisien”, “public tranquility, cleanliness, public services”.
It is this message of appeasement that he puts forward this Tuesday in all his interventions, posing as a man of dialogue, concerned with social justice as well as vigilant in the face of global warming. No break with a policy which he admits is also accountable, but a new way of doing things.
Who are his rivals?
The town hall of Paris is a land traditionally contested by the headliners of the political world, since the time when Jacques Chirac made it his stronghold. On the right, we find Rachida Dati, already present in the battle during the last municipal elections, today Minister of Culture. Perhaps also Gabriel Attal, the former Prime Minister in whom Emmanuel Grégoire sees a “conservative right” candidate.
But it is first in his camp, the left, and more particularly within his own party, the PS, that Emmanuel Grégoire will have to assert himself. His first act is to declare himself even though we are still waiting to know if Anne Hidalgo, the outgoing one, in office since 2014, will run to succeed him. “She announced several times that she would only serve two terms. I believe her,” says Emmanuel Grégoire. He warned her by message of his decision, she did not respond. Between them, the cold becomes an ice floe. She criticized him for his proximity to Olivier Faure, too LFI-compatible for her taste, whom she blames for having contributed to his catastrophic score in the 2022 presidential election. But the gap widened when Emmanuel Grégoire presented himself in June , during the early legislative elections, in the VIIe constituency of Paris, which one of his relatives, Lamia El Aaraje, was targeting.
If Anne Hidalgo leaves the place, Lamia El Aaraje could also be one of the candidates for the war of succession. But it is another name, that of senator Rémi Féraud, head of the socialist group on the Paris council, who holds the rope as knighted dolphin. To which Emmanuel Grégoire retorts that the Paris town hall is “neither an inheritance nor an income from the situation”.
To win the socialist nomination, Emmanuel Grégoire is already relying on the support of 450 socialist activists from the Paris federation, who launched an appeal in his favor, in which they express their conviction that he is “the best placed within the socialist family and more broadly on the left. On the left, he knows that he will also have to count on an LFI candidate and the probable presence of the communist Ian Brossat, whom he has informed of his approach.
