France gets youngest-ever defense chief in 35-year-old Sébastien Lecornu
French Defence Minister Florence Parly (R) hands over to her successor Sebastien Lecornu (L) during a ceremony at L’Hotel de Brienne in Paris, on May 20, 2022. (Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP via Getty Images)
PARIS: The new French government nominated today by President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne sees Senator Sébastien Lecornu, 35, appointed as the new Minister for the Armed Forces, the youngest to hold the title in more than 60 years.
He replaces Florence Parly, the widely respected outgoing minister who held her post for five years but did not want to continue in government. In Lecornu, the French armed forces is getting a minister who is first and foremost a politician whereas Parly was an astute budgetary expert.
Lecornu, who holds an undergraduate law degree, is not a newcomer to government or politics but is a novice to defense — his only experience being as a reservist in the gendarmerie, which is the French police force with military status. He’s also by far and away the youngest of the 25 defense ministers there have been since France’s Fifth Republic was instituted in 1959.
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But then being the youngest is not new to Lecornu. He was the youngest parliamentary assistant in the National Assembly in 2005 at the age of 19, where he met Bruno Le Maire, the current finance minister, who was the secretary of state for European Affairs at the time. When he was 22, he became the youngest ministerial adviser when he integrated Le Maire’s cabinet at the European Affairs Ministry, following him later to the agriculture ministry.
In 2017 he was appointed secretary of state under environment minister Nicolas Hulot, becoming the youngest member of Macron’s first government. A year later he was appointed minister in charge of territorial authorities, and then in 2020 he became minister for France’s overseas departments and territories and was elected as senator.
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According to the quality French daily Le Monde, Lecornu’s “ascension is a spectacular as it has been fast.” It remains to be seen whether the armed forces take to a minister who is about the same age as most generals’ sons.
Lecornu also takes over at a time of delicate military diplomacy between France and the US, after the European nation was left out of the US-UK-Australia security arrangement known as AUKUS last fall, resulting in Australia’s unilateral and surprise cancellation of a contract to buy 12 diesel-powered electric submarines from France’s Naval Group. France took the move as a stinging slap in the face, which still rankles today, and was significant enough that Macron briefly withdrew the French ambassadors to the US and Australia.