He stopped counting the days. Christophe Béchu has been occupying his large office at the Roquelaure hotel for a little over two months, with the only fantasy in the middle of an outdated decor, a whiteboard drawing the hoped-for drop in CO emissions.2. To be a minister, he dreamed of it. But the days are ticking away and the doubt persists. Is he in his place at the Ministry of Ecological Transition? The planet is burning and everyone is watching. Him, the right-wing man whose elegance his colleagues salute, but are unaware of all ecological convictions.
The former mayor of Angers, not yet in his fifties, was, it is true, thrown into the environment somewhat by accident. First appointed in May Minister Delegate in charge of local authorities, the Secretary General of Edouard Philippe’s party, Horizons, takes, on July 4, the place fallen to Amélie de Montchalin, defeated during the legislative elections.
The Philippists had grumbled, considering their party cramped in a small ministry. They were going to be served with this titanic post, overseeing local authorities, transport, housing, rurality and biodiversity. Christophe Béchu, the ambitious man who, according to his relatives, had been struggling since 2017 to be one, entered the heart of the reactor with the sole legitimacy of his political skill and the management of his city, ” where life is good ” and among the greenest in France.
Absent, “strawberry”, the jokes fuse
Faced with the magnitude of the task, vertigo seized him, he confided to us in the middle of the summer. Here he is more serene. When we meet him, on this weekend in mid-September, the ex-senator assures “look ahead”. Monday, September 26 was presented to the Council of Ministers the bill on renewable energies, which will manage the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Then will come the housing and transport files… His time has come, like a second chance. The former local elected official admits it. He missed his entrance.
In front of the five ministers and secretaries of state under his supervision, he would have confided during one of their weekly meetings, resigned: ” You did see ? It is said that “I do not print.” » Absent, ” of strawberries “, the jokes fuse, including within the government, where one evokes a “Bechu subject”.
Everything went too fast. His taking office coincides with a general awareness. The heat waves are repeated, a historic drought dries up the rivers, the megafires devour the forests of Gironde, Ardèche and even Finistère. Almost a godsend for a “M. Environment”. “Climate skepticism is much less present than it was a few years ago on television sets. But the sense of urgency was perhaps not so shared before this summer,” he observes. Yet nothing. Or so little.
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