Facts about Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Macron Biography
Emmanuel Macron is the French politician whose swift rise culminated in his election as the president of France in 2017. He was re-elected in 2022.
Born in Amiens, about 90 miles north of Paris, Emmanuel Macron had an elite education: he first graduated from the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense, then earned a master’s degree in public affairs from Sciences Po, then graduated from the École Nationale d’Administration (or ENA) in 2004.
Macron worked as a financial administrator in the French Ministry of Economy from 2004-2008, then spent four years at the investment bank Rothschild & Cie. A Socialist, he worked for the election of Francois Hollande in 2012, then served on Hollande’s staff starting in 2012. He took the post of Minister of the Economy and Finance in 2014.
In April of 2016, Emmanuel Macron launched his own new party, titled En Marche! (In English, “Forward!” or “On the Move!”) He resigned from Hollande’s government and began laying the groundwork for a run for president in 2017. A free-market progressive, he ran on a program that was pro-jobs, pro-Europe and pro-immigration.
In the group elections of April 23, 2017 he qualified for a final head-to-head runoff against Marine Le Pen, and on May 7, 2017 he won that election by a vote of 66.1% to 33.9%, becoming France’s president at the age of 39. Macron succeeded Francois Hollande and began his five-year term on May 14, 2017.
He won re-election in 2022, after a close contest with conservative politician Marine Le Pen.
Extra credit
Emmanuel Macron married Brigitte Trogneux in 2007; she was his French literature teacher in high school. “Mr. Macron and his wife met when he was a 15-year-old 10th grader at a Jesuit high school in Amiens, and Ms. Trogneux was a 40-year-old married mother of three children, one of whom was in Mr. Macron’s class,” according to a 2017 story in The New York Times. Trogneux was born in April of 1953, making her 24 years older than Macron; she has three children with her previous husband.