He is a man who has walked the ministerial corridors, those of the Élysée and the senior civil service, but also large companies, who must become Gabriel Attal’s right-hand man at Matignon. Emmanuel Moulin, currently director of the Treasury, will move into the chair of chief of staff of the new prime minister. A challenge for this 55-year-old man, brilliant and always smiling, but more an expert in economic subjects than in major sovereign issues.
Because it is economics and finance that have marked his career. After a few years on the benches of Sciences-Po – where he campaigned with the young Rocardians -, Essec and ENA, Emmanuel Moulin joined the general management of the Treasury in 1996. He was appointed alternate administrator of the World Bank in Washington where he will live on September 11, 2001, an obviously significant episode. He then became secretary general of the Paris Club – which manages the debt of developing countries – from 2003 to 2005. In 2006, he became a banker at Citigroup, in charge of the public sector for France and Belgium.
After this quick stint in private banking, a year later he joined Christine Lagarde, Minister of the Economy and Finance, as deputy chief of staff, in charge of macroeconomic files, financial files and European and international affairs.
Then he entered the Élysée, in June 2009, as economic advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy. The years were difficult, marked by economic crises in the world and in Europe – those of subprime mortgages and the euro. He will manage them with great composure, everyone around him says unanimously. And without departing from an infectious humor. In any case, these years will sharpen his sense of negotiation, his management of emergencies or his detailed knowledge of the workings of the European Union and international institutions.
In May 2012, François Hollande was elected, and he took a new detour into the private sector by joining the Eurotunnel group as deputy general director, then deputy general director. In February 2015, he became general director of Mediobanca bank. Attracted again by the State service, he was appointed chief of staff to the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire in May 2017. Who therefore appointed him director of the Treasury in 2020.
Hardworking, Emmanuel Moulin also ticks an essential box in the Macronian system: being close to the secretary general of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler. Both met at Sciences Po, lively students who ended their evenings in a restaurant near rue Saint-Guillaume in Paris, to expound on the countless qualities of Michel Rocard, whom Moulin imitates to perfection, just like Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Everyone went their own way – Moulin on the right, Kohler on the left – while remaining friends. “You will have difficulty finding a sheet of cigarette paper between the two,” confides a relative of the two men. This may help…
