At 47, Cécile Duflot has already juggled between several lives: from town planner to minister, she has been, since 2018, the director general of the NGO Oxfam France. Opposed to the “linearity of French careers”, she repeats at will that she still does not know what she will do later. Sometimes evoking her passion for chocolate, sometimes her project of planting hellebores in her garden, the one who has kept the Catholic faith returns to The world on his years of study “epic” : “UFO” among her student friends, she became a mother at 21.
In what environment did you grow up?
We lived in the Surville district, in Montereau-Fault-Yonne, in Seine-et-Marne. It was a very working-class environment, but we were part of the small middle class: my mother was a physics and chemistry teacher and my father, district manager at the SNCF. My parents weren’t rolling in gold, but it was fine. A house, a garden… we were on a kind of urban island in the middle of rapeseed fields.
I have the memory of an absolutely perfect and happy childhood, the eldest of three siblings. My parents were very committed trade unionists. My mother was a real environmentalist – quite original in the 1970s and 1980s – while my father was not really. She had thoughts about the depletion of natural resources, oil… She brought our packaging to the recycling plant. My mother was also anti-nuclear unlike my father. He had participated in the construction of the TGV Sud-Est, he embraced the idea of technological progress. While my mother, who had done very advanced studies in physics, used her scientific culture to question herself. From childhood, it forces you to ask questions. Me, I liked adult discussions, so I sat on the stairs to listen to them talk.
What was your parents’ relationship to politics?
They were never on a list, never took their card in a party… For them, it was just tricks. I was brought up to distrust politics but also to have a healthy relationship with money: you have to have it to live well, but it’s not an end in itself. On the contrary, it can be alienating. And it was a great chance for me because when you’re in politics, it’s protective not to have a taste for money. For having rubbed shoulders with this world, I know that one can be of an abyssal loneliness by having a lot of power or money. The only important thing in life are the bonds we make.
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