Élisabeth Borne (; born 18 April 1961) is a French politician who has served as Prime Minister of France since May 2022. She is a member of President Emmanuel Macron's party Renaissance. Borne is the second woman to hold the position of Prime Minister after Édith Cresson, who served from 1991 to 1992.
A civil engineer, government official and manager of state enterprises in the transport and construction sectors, Borne previously served as minister of transport (2017–2019) and minister of ecology (2019–2020). She was then minister of labour, employment and integration in the Castex government from 2020 to 2022. On 16 May 2022, President Macron appointed her as the next prime minister after Castex's resignation, as it is the tradition following the presidential elections in France.
Borne led the centrist Ensemble coalition into the 2022 legislative election which resulted in a hung parliament: enjoying a 115-seat majority before the election, the ruling coalition was reduced to 251 seats (from 346), still emerging as the largest bloc in Parliament but 38 short of a majority. Unable to broker any deal with opposition parties to form a stable majority administration, Borne officially formed a minority government in July 2022.
Notably, as prime minister, she oversaw the contentious passage of a pension system reform raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, the repealing of most of the Covid-era health restrictions and the passage of a multi-year military planning law, paving way for a 40%-increase in military spending between 2024 and 2030. She also led the government's financial response to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
In July 2023, holding onto her position as PM amid media reports of a possible dismissal, Borne reshuffled her cabinet for the second time since the beginning of her Premiership.
Early life and education
Elisabeth Borne was born in Paris. Her French-born mother, Marguerite Lecèsne, was a pharmacist. Her father, Joseph Bornstein, son of Zelig Bornstein from Łuków (formerly Congress Poland), was born in Belgium. He fled to France at the outset of the Second World War and was active in the French Resistance. Bornstein was one of four brothers. In 1943, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Grenoble, where he was part of the French resistance and deported to Auschwitz German concentration camp. His father and younger brother were sent to the German gas chambers. Joseph and his older brother were kept alive to work in a synthetic fuel factory.
In April 1945, they met Borne's mother, Marguerite Lescène, at the platform of Paris's Orsay train station where she was helping deportees. She took the brothers to her hometown in Normandy where her family helped them rebuild their lives. Joseph Bornstein later published descriptions of the horrors he had witnessed in the Holocaust. He was naturalised in 1950 and changed the family name to "Borne". Borne's mother ran a pharmaceutical laboratory after the war. Her father ran a rubber products factory but suffered from trauma and severe depression. He committed suicide when she was 11 years old. After his death, Borne was awarded "Ward of the Nation" education benefits which the state granted to minors who were orphaned as a result of the war or had a parent who had died in exceptional circumstances.
Borne attended high school at Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris. Later, she entered the École Polytechnique (class of 1981). In 1986, she obtained her Diplôme d'Ingénieur in civil engineering from the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (National School of Road and Bridge Engineering) and one year later a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Collège des Ingénieurs.
Career in the public sector
Borne joined the civil service as a government official at the French planning and works ministry (ministère de l'Equipement) in 1987. In the early 1990s, she was an advisor in the ministry of education under Lionel Jospin and Jack Lang (both members of the Socialist Party). From 1993 to 1996 she worked as a technical director for the public housing company Sonacotra. In 1997, prime minister Jospin appointed her as his advisor for urban planning, housing and transport.
In 2002, Borne became a strategy director and member of the executive committee at the state-owned railway company SNCF, before joining the public works construction company Eiffage as concessions manager in 2007. She worked as director of urban planning for the City of Paris under mayor Bertrand Delanoë from 2008 until 2013.