Xavier Bertrand


Xavier René Louis Bertrand is a French politician. He was Minister of Health from 2005 to 2007 in Dominique de Villepin's government under President Jacques Chirac, then served as Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Solidarity from 2007 to 2009 and as Minister of Labour, Employment and Health from 2010 to 2012. He played a leading role in Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential campaign in 2007. After the 2015 regional elections, Bertrand became president of the regional council of Hauts-de-France. He was a member of Union for a Popular Movement, later The Republicans, until 11 December 2017, when he announced that was "definitively leaving" the party after Laurent Wauquiez was elected the leader of the party.

Biography

Early life

Xavier Bertrand was born on 21 March 1965 in Châlons-sur-Marne, in the Marne département, of the Champagne-Ardenne région of France. He studied in Reims, where he obtained a master's degree in public law, then a Diplôme d'Études Supérieures Spécialisées in local administration.
He began his professional life as an insurance agent.

Political career

At the age of sixteen, he volunteered for the Rally for the Republic and quickly went into politics.
In 1992, he led the campaign for the 'no' to the Maastricht Treaty in his department, the Aisne in the region of Picardy. He was at the time assistant to the mayor of Saint-Quentin, Aisne. He was one of the pioneers of the 'Saint-Quentin beach', an event similar to Paris-Plage. From 1997 to 2002, he was parliamentary assistant to Jacques Braconnier, Senator for the Aisne, and he was elected to the National Assembly on 16 June 2002 for the 18th legislature, representing the second constituency of the Aisne Department.
In 2003, Alain Juppé, President for the Union for a Popular Movement, made put him in charge of leading the debate and explaining the subject of pensions reform during a "Tour of France". He was chosen to defend this draft bill in the National Assembly. At the same time he was part of the 'Club de la boussole,' a group of deputies who declared their loyalty to then-President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
During this period, Xavier Bertrand received favourable attention in the right-wing political milieu. On 31 March 2004, when Raffarin appointed his third government, he was named Junior Health Minister for Health Insurance. Under his Senior Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, he led the reform on health insurance. Later on, he pronounced himself strongly in favour of a European Constitution for the referendum on 29 May 2005.
After the majority of the French electorate answered "no" to the referendum, Raffarin resigned as Prime Minister. Under the new PM, Dominique de Villepin, and with the encouragement of the former one, he became the Senior Minister for Health, when Douste-Blazy was reappointed Foreign Affairs Minister. His mandate as Health Minister was marked by the chikungunya epidemic and the law against smoking in public places, ratified in 2004.
He announced his support to UMP presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy on 29 September 2006. He was named Sarkozy's official spokesperson on 15 January 2007. He quit the government on 26 March to devote himself fully to the campaign. On 18 May 2007, he was named Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Solidarity in the new Prime Minister François Fillon's government.
On 19 June 2007 he was renamed Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Solidarity in Fillon's second government after the first one handed in its resignation the day before for rehandling after government number two Alain Juppé, Minister of Ecology and Development and the only Minister of State, resigned after having lost in the legislative race to deputy of Bordeaux. He then served as Minister of Labour, Employment and Health from 2010 to 2012.

Personal life

He was married to Emmanuelle Gontier, advisor on human resources, on 11 July 1998. They have three children, two of whom are twins. He has been a member of the Grand Orient of France since 1995.