Advertisement

Meet Olivier Dussopt - the minister charged with getting France’s pension reforms through Parliament

The Local France
The Local France - [email protected]
Meet Olivier Dussopt - the minister charged with getting France’s pension reforms through Parliament
France's Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

Getting the French government’s controversial pension reform bill passed was always going to be a difficult sell, as it was guaranteed to have unions up in arms and generate massive protests.

Advertisement

But who is the relatively young politician charged with getting it over the Parliamentary finish line - who admitted to franceinfo that he’s been getting by on three or four hours sleep in recent weeks, and whose home town was briefly blacked out by pension reform protesters?

Meet Olivier Dussopt

France’s Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt is 44, and from the town of Anannoy, in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, where he was mayor from 2008 to 2017. He has a reputation of a politician who knows his brief, who works hard - and, who crucially, gets a job done.

He’s never shied away from difficult jobs. Before pension reforms, he took on the apparently impossible and definitely controversial job of modernising France’s unemployment system. And prior to that had dragged public service reforms through Parliament. It’s little wonder, then, that Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has given him a crucial role with the pension reform bill.

Advertisement

He became minister of labour, employment and integration following the legislative elections in June 2022; and had served as public accounts minister in the governments of Édouard Philippe and Jean Castex between 2019 to 2022.

Dussopt first became an MP in 2007 - when he was the youngest politician in the Assembly. Back then, he was a member of the left-of-centre Parti socialiste, and even worked on former Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ campaign team in the party's primaries for the 2017 presidential election. 

Like many politicians previously associated with the centre-left Parti Socialiste and centre-right Les Républicains, Dussopt opted to join the government of the newly-elected Emmanuel Macron in 2017, accepting a role under Gérald Darmanin, who was then Public Accounts Minister.

He was promptly expelled from the Socialist Party and resigned from the National Assembly on Christmas Eve that year. He formed a new leftist party - Territoires de progrès (TdP) - but was re-elected as an MP in his constituency on June 19th, 2022, under the Ensemble banner, a mix of centre right and left parties that support Emmanuel Macron.

He determinedly keeps his private life as private as a government minister can. "I will not be on the cover of Paris Match cooking," he once said. "Everyone has their own private garden and I consider the place where I go on holiday is of no interest to anyone."

Where next?

The pension reform bill could go to a vote as early as Thursday.

READ ALSO What next for France’s controversial pension reform bill?

But it would appear that there’s little chance of rest in Dussopt’s immediate future. He’s set to front an immigration law bill due to come before parliament later this year and is already consulting ahead of a future bill on full employment.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also