Cécile Duflot

Cécile Duflot
President of Oxfam France
Assumed office
15 June 2018
Member of the National Assembly
for Paris's 6th constituency
In office
2012–2017
Preceded byDanièle Hoffman-Rispal
Succeeded byPierre Person
Minister of Territorial Equality and Housing
In office
16 May 2012 – 2 April 2014
PresidentFrançois Hollande
Prime MinisterJean-Marc Ayrault
Preceded byBenoist Apparu
Succeeded bySylvia Pinel
National Secretary of Europe Ecology – The Greens
In office
16 November 2006 – 30 November 2013
Preceded byYann Wehrling
Personal details
Born (1975-04-01) 1 April 1975 (age 49)
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, France
Political partyEurope Ecology – The Greens
Children4
Alma materParis Diderot University
ESSEC Business School
ProfessionTown planner
Executive director of Oxfam France

Cécile Duflot (French pronunciation: [se.sil dy.flo]; born 1 April 1975) is a French non-governmental organisation (NGO) leader and former politician. She has been a government minister and political party leader.

She was Minister of Territorial Equality and Housing (French: Ministre de l'Egalité des Territoires et du Logement) in the Ayrault Cabinet from 2012 to 2014.[1] Until June 2012, she was Party Secretary (i.e. leader) of Europe Ecology – The Greens, a position she held from November 2006; with Jean-Luc Bennahmias, she was the only Green leader to have served two consecutive terms. In May 2012, she announced her resignation from this role.

On 5 April 2018, she announced her departure from politics to lead Oxfam France starting on 15 June.[2]

Personal life

Duflot was born in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, Val-de-Marne,[3] the eldest daughter of a railway unionist and a physics and chemistry teacher (who was herself also a unionist).[4] Duflot spent her childhood and adolescence in the district of Montereau-Fault-Yonne before returning to her native town, Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, in the early 1990s. She is a town planner by profession, a graduate of the ESSEC Business School (French Business School), and holds a master's degree in geography.[3]

Her first activist commitments were in the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne ("Young Christian Workers")[5] and the Ligue pour la protection des oiseaux ("Birds' Protection League").[6]

A divorcée,[7] Cécile Duflot is the mother of three girls and a boy in a step-family.[8] Also, she shared the life of Jean-Vincent Placé, a French Senator and once Secretary of State.

Political career

After joining The Greens in 2001, she stood in the municipal elections at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges that same year.[9] She became an opposition municipal councillor in the town in June 2004.[4]

Duflot in 2010

In 2003, she joined the electoral college of the Greens;[4] she organised the acquisition of their national headquarters.[5] She became spokesperson for the party in January 2005. That same year on World Water Day, she swam in the Seine in Paris with three other members of the electoral college to denounce river pollution in France and to match Jacques Chirac's promise, when he was Mayor of Paris, to swim in the Seine.[10]

On 16 November 2006 she was elected National Secretary of the Conseil National Inter Régional, succeeding Yann Wehrling.[9] At the age of 31, she was the youngest-ever National Secretary of the Greens.[9]

At the end of 2006, she stood for the party's primary to nominate its presidential candidate for the 2007 French presidential election. Earning 23.29% of the vote, she came third after Dominique Voynet and Yves Cochet, and did not qualify for the second round.

In the 2007 legislative elections, she was the Green Party candidate in the third district of Val-De-Marne and gained 3.55% of the vote.

In March 2008 during the municipal elections at Villeneuve-St-Georges, she came in second place on a unified ticket of the PS, the MRC, the PRG and the Greens after socialist Laurent Dutheil.[11] The ticket earned 24.36%.

On 6 December 2008, introducing a motion synthesizing four of the six activists' voting slips three weeks earlier, she was re-offered the post of National Secretary of the Greens with 70.99% of the votes.[12] With Jean-Luc Benhamias, she is the only secretary to be offered a second consecutive term,[3] Dominique Plancke having completed three terms of one year.[13]

During her first term, she worked to establish Europe Écologie[3] for the European Elections of 2009.[14] She is not eligible as a candidate for this now, preferring instead to focus on her mandate as National Secretary.[15]

In 2010, she along with Monica Frassoni, Renate Künast, and Marina Silva were named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers,[16] for taking Green mainstream.

In August 2014, she voiced criticisms of the French government, particularly of President François Hollande, stating that, "...wanting to be a leftist president, he never found his social base nor his supporters. This is not a question of temperament, rather it is the result of a succession of often unexpected choices, which are sometimes inconsistent with each other."[17]

She is a member of the Advisory Panel of DiEM25.[18]

As Minister

The position of Minister of Housing was offered to her in the Ayrault government of the Hollande presidency, which began in May 2012. One of her tasks was to promulgate a law on social housing. Her first effort, announced 11 September of that year, failed in October,[19] causing embarrassment to the Prime Minister.[20] The loi Duflot replaced the fr:Loi Scellier on 18 January 2013.[21][22]

The loi Alur (Accès au logement et urbanisme rénové) restricted landlord-tenant relations in exchange for favourable financial treatment.[23][24] It passed on 20 February 2014.[25][26]

After politics

In June 2017 she was for the Green Party a candidate for Parliament. She was eliminated in the first round.

Since June 2018 she is the executive director of the NGO Oxfam France, member of the confederation Oxfam International.

She is a member of the board of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne University for 2020-2024.[27]

On April 22, 2022, she was appointed by decree to the National Consultative Ethics Committee for Life Sciences and Health on the proposal of the Defender of Rights [28]

Main political offices

The French political system allows one person to hold multiple political offices. The electoral promise of François Hollande to terminate what is known as Dual mandate has not, as of March 2014, been fulfilled.

References

  1. ^ (in French) Ministre de l'Egalité des Territoires et du Logement Archived 26 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine (official French government web site for the Ministry)
    (in French) Ministre de l'Egalité des Territoires et du Logement (French Wikipedia)
  2. ^ Abel Mestre (5 April 2018). "Cécile Duflot : " Je quitte la politique avec beaucoup de sérénité "". Le Monde. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  3. ^ a b c d (in French) Catherine Simon, « Cécile Duflot, l'ouverture en Vert », Le Monde, 20 January 2009
  4. ^ a b c (in French) « Numéro vert » by Sabrina Champenois, Libération, 10 January 2007
  5. ^ a b "Dossier de presse : " Présentation des candidat(e)s Vert(e)s en Basse-Normandie "" (PDF) (in French).[permanent dead link] (238 KB) (2007 legislative elections), on the official site of the Verts de Basse-Normandie
  6. ^ (in French) « Elle s'enracine chez les Verts », Ouest-France, 8 December 2008
  7. ^ "" Portrait de Cécile Duflot "" (in French). Archived from the original on 11 October 2008. on the website for the Verts de Loire-Atlantique
  8. ^ Stepfamily
  9. ^ a b c (in French) Marie Quenet, « Duflot, l'inconnue réélue » Archived 19 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Le Journal du Dimanche, 7 December 2008
  10. ^ (in French) Matthieu Durand, « Les Verts se baignent dans la Seine » Archived 29 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine on the official site for La Chaîne Info, 22 March 2005
  11. ^ (in French) Liste « Villeneuve en mouvement » au premier tour des élections municipales de 2008 sur le site officiel du ministère de l'Intérieur
  12. ^ (in French) « Cécile Duflot réélue secrétaire nationale des Verts »[permanent dead link], Le Nouvel observateur, 6 décembre 2008
  13. ^ Yves Frémion, 2007
  14. ^ (in French) « Profil de Cécile Duflot » Archived 21 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine sur le site officiel d'Europe Écologie
  15. ^ (in French) Rodolphe Geisler, « Duflot : "Les Verts ont encore une raison d'être" », Le Figaro, 5 December 2008
  16. ^ "The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers". Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
  17. ^ Berdah, Arthur (20 August 2014). "Pour Cécile Duflot, "Hollande n'est le président de personne"". www.lefigaro.fr. Le Figaro. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
  18. ^ "Advisory Panel".
  19. ^ Royer, Solenn de (24 October 2012). "Loi Duflot censurée : chronique d'un "bug" annoncé" – via Le Figaro.
  20. ^ Barotte, Nicolas; Bourmaud, François-Xavier (24 October 2012). "La bévue d'Ayrault affaiblit encore son autorité" – via Le Figaro.
  21. ^ "legifrance.fr: " LOI n° 2013–61 du 18 janvier 2013 relative à la mobilisation du foncier public en faveur du logement et au renforcement des obligations de production de logement social" 18 Jan 2013".
  22. ^ "Courrier des maires – Groupe moniteur". Archived from the original on 10 March 2014.
  23. ^ Papazian, Carole (24 October 2013). "L'encadrement des loyers de Cécile Duflot jugé inefficace" – via Le Figaro.
  24. ^ Anne-Hélène Pommpier, « Ce que prévoit le projet de loi Alur », in Le Figaro, lundi 30 septembre 2013, page 26.
  25. ^ "Dossiers législatifs - LOI n° 2014-366 du 24 mars 2014 pour l'accès au logement et un urbanisme rénové - Legifrance".
  26. ^ "La loi Duflot sur le logement adoptée : ce qui va changer". 20 February 2014.
  27. ^ "Board of Pantheon Sorbonne University".
  28. ^ "Décret du 22 avril 2022 portant nomination au Comité consultatif national d'éthique pour les sciences de la vie et de la santé". www.legifrance.gouv.fr. Retrieved 24 April 2022.

Bibliography