LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
French President Emmanuel Macron's communications adviser Frederic Michel arrives before a cabinet meeting as part of celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Elysee Treaty to seal reconciliation between France and West Germany 18 years after World War II at the Elysée – Palace in Paris on January 22, 2023. The date of reunification is highly symbolic: exactly sixty years to the day after Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer signed the Elysée Treaty, which marked “the end of decades, if not centuries, of bitter disputes.” marked rivalries and bloody wars,” the two leaders write in an editorial published by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the French Journal du Dimanche. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
POLITICS – Frédéric Michel, in charge of communications for Emmanuel Macron since September 2022, announced this Thursday, December 14, that he is leaving his position after 15 months at the Élysée to join the MCH Group, a Swiss Direct marketing group, operator of large contemporary art fairs.
“It was a real honor to work for President Macron,” said the head of state’s special adviser on communications and strategy on his Linkedin page.
When he took up the post of adviser, Frédéric Michel summarized his role in a formula that was memorable: “I am here to build the legacy of the president”. One of the anglicisms with which he likes to interrupt his sentences, to here to describe the legacy, namely that of Emmanuel Macron's ten years in office, a goal that he will therefore not achieve.
“Difficult” but “rewarding”
“It has often been difficult, whether in national or international affairs, but it has also been extremely rewarding to work with such a leader and help advance much-needed reforms and address international crises,” said the president, who served as president political challenges, crisis related to retirement at the age of 64, the urban riots of the summer, the horrors of the relative majority and even the conflicts in Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas.
A farewell message in English, an allusion to his professional career, which he spent mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world, in the spheres of New Labor under the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and then as a lobbyist for the News Corp group of the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
At the Élysée Palace, the communications adviser, who was not close to Emmanuel Macron from the start, was sometimes criticized in the presidential camp by some who considered him isolated from French politics.
On January 1, Frédéric Michel, 51, will become communications director and vice president of the MCH Group, an international company that, among other things, organizes the major Art Basel in Basel, where its headquarters are located.
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