Marielle de Sarnez (; 27 March 195113 January 2021) was a French politician who served as Secretary of State for European Affairs under Prime Minister Édouard Philippe.
A member of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) until 2008 when she joined the Democratic Movement (MoDem), de Sarnez was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1999 until her appointment as Minister for European Affairs in the Phillipe government in 2017. De Sarnez resigned after a month due to a scandal involving alleged payment for work she did not perform, but was elected a few days later to represent the 11th constituency of Paris in the National Assembly. She was a committed Europeanist and centrist, pushing the MoDem to resist currents on each end of the political spectrum. De Sarnez was a longtime collaborator to party president and three-time candidate for the presidency of France, François Bayrou.
Early life
Marielle de Sarnez was born in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and participated in the occupation of neighboring boys school Lycée Jean-Baptiste Say. (Her father was elected as a deputy to the National Assembly on the Gaullist conservative Union of Democrats for the Republic—UDR—ticket a month later.) de Sarnez began working in retail rather than continuing her studies. declined at that time, later saying she was glad to have waited for a more compatible political partner.
In this milieu she met François Bayrou, with whom she worked closely for the next 40 years. In 2007, it was 18.57% (Nicolas Sarkozy, a right-wing candidate then running with the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and Socialist Party (PS) candidate Ségolène Royal advanced) and 9.13% in 2012 (Sarkozy and PS candidate François Hollande advanced). Bayrou, in consultation with de Sarnez, decided not to run in the 2017 French presidential election and they both instead supported Emmanuel Macron of La République En Marche! as an alternative centrist candidate, ultimately successful.
Role in Europe
While de Sarnez made her name as "the woman who made Bayrou", She was in the forefront for Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and it inspired the choice to make orange the signature color of MoDem. In the contentious on ratifying the European Constitution, de Sarnez supported ratification. Although the measure failed, de Sarnez praised the "democratic moment" of the entire nation reading and debating the text.
De Sarnez was a substitute for the Committee on Foreign Affairs, a member of the Delegation for relations with South Africa, and a substitute for the delegation to the EU–Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee. In 2016, she served as the parliament's rapporteur on a plan to lend Tunisia €500 million on favourable terms to help it reduce its external debt and consolidate its democratic mechanisms. In addition to her committee assignments, de Sarnez was a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Children's Rights.
In May 2017, de Sarnez left the European Parliament upon her appointment as French Minister for European Affairs. Reporting from Le Canard enchaîné shortly thereafter alleged that de Sarnez had been paid for work she had not actually done, embroiling her and Bayrou in a jobs scandal. Prosecutors opened an investigation into whether assistants to de Sarnez as an MEP had actually been paid for work done for the MoDem party in Paris. Both she and Bayrou (the new Minister of Justice) resigned, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced that Bayrou would not be a part of the government. On 21 June 2017, Nathalie Loiseau succeeded de Sarnez as the minister for European affairs.
Representative of Paris
thumb|upright=0.6|De Sarnez during her first week in the National Assembly in 2017
Despite the timing of the scandal, de Sarnez, who was also a councillor (joint RPR-UDF slate) for the 14th arrondissement of Paris serving in that capacity from 2017 to 2021.
On 24 April 2018, De Sarnez was among the guests invited to the state dinner hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump in honor of President Emmanuel Macron at the White House.
On 31 May 2019, she led a delegation of the committee on a visit to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Syrian Democratic Council in Ayn Issa. After de Sarnez’s death in 2021, she was succeeded as deputy by Maud Gatel.
Personal life
De Sarnez married Philippe Augier (later Mayor of Deauville) and had two children, circa 1979. French leaders across the political spectrum sent public messages mourning her death, including President Macron and his rivals in the 2017 election, extreme-right FN candidate Marine Le Pen and hard left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon; as well as current Prime Minister Jean Castex and de Sarnez's longtime professional partner Bayrou. and Le Monde wrote, "One of the pillars of the house of centrism has fallen."