“He's going to go for it”: who is the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, the only real heavyweight in the Barnier government ?

A figure of a liberal-conservative right with inflexible convictions, a supporter of a “policy of civilization” and a fierce opponent of the rapprochement between Macron's party and Les Républicains, Bruno Retailleau was appointed on Saturday to the key post of Interior Minister, where his radicalism is likely to irritate the presidential camp.

There was a box missing in the rich CV of the senator from Vendée: that of minister. At 63, he is about to tick it, by agreeing to appear in the team proposed by Michel Barnier to Emmanuel Macron, not without first ensuring that the government configuration would be closer to a “cohabitation” than a “coalition“.

Because the elected official from Vendée, strategic leader of the very powerful LR group in the Senate since 2014, has not stopped in seven years from attacking head-on the “at the same time” Macronist and the tripartite system, “poison of the Republic”.

“When you mix napkins and dishcloths, in the end it creates impotence. It hardens France and leads it into a wall“, he chanted again during the summer in the face of calls for a coalition. “The one who can make me change my mind has not yet been born”.

But with Michel Barnier at Matignon, the situation has changed. “He is our man, the man of the family”, et “we are certain that he will not be a collaborator” d’Emmanuel Macron, Bruno Retailleau now insists.

This horse riding enthusiast and former rider at Puy-du-Fou has therefore decided to overcome the obstacle, encouraged by many close friends in the Senate.

"He's going to go all out"

But the former president of Pays de la Loire does not intend to board the ship without his triptych: “order“, “authority“, “firmness“.

“He is not going there to pursue a centrist policy, that is certain. He is going to go there frankly”, warns a centrist senator. Before adding, amused: “With him, it will rather be 'Pass me the file on state medical aid!'", this system granted to foreigners in an irregular situation, a highly flammable file.

On immigration indeed, the former protégé of Philippe de Villiers at the Movement for France (MPF) is not the type to give ground.

This is evidenced by the battle that began in December with former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne over the immigration law, which was considerably toughened after tough negotiations between LR and Matignon.

“I got everything I could get, I didn't let anything go. We were on the brink, but I told my friends to trust mee”, he would confide a few days later, recounting this standoff.

With a double personal victory at stake: the adoption of a Retailleau-inspired law and the fracturing of the presidential camp.

On societal reforms, the profile of this opponent of marriage for all also risks making people cringe. In the spring, even in the minority – extremely rare for him in the Senate –, he was still leading the battle against the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution.

As for the bill on the end of life wanted by Emmanuel Macron, it is “a euthanasia law”, thunders the Vendéen with the slim silhouette and thin glasses.

He “knows how to round off”

“Since a year, he is only becoming more radical by imposing his extremely hard positions”, worries a senior member of the presidential camp in the Senate. “Who is crazy enough to govern with Retailleau ?“, wondered an outgoing minister in recent days.

On the left, some also bring out controversial statements, such as during the riots of June 2023, when he established a link between immigration, these excesses and“a kind of regression to ethnic origins” from the "second and third generations".

At LR, on the contrary, the picture is painted of a man "who listens", "who knows how to round off", and we salute the balance of the duo he forms with President Gérard Larcher, capable of preserving the unity of the first parliamentary group of the upper house, much more disciplined than his counterpart in the National Assembly.

The close guard of this insatiable reader also praises "intelligence" and the "workforce" of his leader, just like the oratorical talent of the one who always expresses himself without the slightest note, citing from memory many authors and thinkers to support his argument.

A faithful follower of François Fillon in 2017, candidate for the presidency of LR in 2022 defeated by Eric Ciotti, Bruno Retailleau voted blank in the second round of the last presidential election.

Son of a grain merchant, practicing Catholic and “rural” assumed, this discreet and modest parliamentarian is preparing to take the light at Beauvau, far from his Vendée lands where he raises chickens, donkeys and sheep.