Marielle de Sarnez


Marielle de Sarnez is a French politician of the Democratic Movement who currently represents the Paris 11th in the National Assembly. She served as Minister for European Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Édouard Philippe from May to June 2017.

Career

Career in national politics

De Sarnez was first elected Member of the European Parliament for the Île-de-France in 2014. A member of the MoDem, she served as vice-chair of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, and sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education.
De Sarnez was also substitute for the Committee on Foreign Affairs, a member of the delegation for relations with South Africa and a substitute for the delegation to the EU-Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee. In 2016, she served as the parliament’s rapporteur on a plan to lend Tunisia €500 million on favourable terms to help it reduce its external debt and consolidate its democratic mechanisms.
In addition to her committee assignments, de Sarnez was a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Children’s Rights.
On the national level, de Sarnez served as campaign director for François Bayrou's unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign. In the Republicans’ 2016 presidential primaries, she endorsed Alain Juppé as the party's candidate for the office of President of France.

Career in government and resignation

Le Canard enchaîné published information that de Sarnez had been paid for work she had not actually done, embroiling François Bayrou in a fictitious jobs scandal. Bayrou resigned several days later, just before the 2017 legislative election, with Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announcing that Bayrou would not be a part of the government.
On 21 June 2017, de Sarnez was succeeded as the French Minister for European Affairs by Nathalie Loiseau.

Member of the French Parliament, 2017–present

De Sarnez won a parliamentary seat in Paris in the 2017 legislative elections.
Since 2017, de Sarnez has been chairing the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the National Assembly. On 31 May 2019, she led a delegation of the committee on a visit to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Syrian Democratic Council in Ayn Issa.