Axelle Lemaire

Education and personal life

Lemaire was born in Ottawa, Ontario, to a French mother and a Quebecois father. After being brought up in Hull, Quebec, where she attended Collège Saint-Joseph de Hull, Lemaire lived as a teenager in Montpellier.

She studied Modern Literature and Political Science at the Sciences Po. She earned law degrees at the Panthéon-Assas University (DEA, 2000) and at King's College Dickson Poon School of Law (LLM, 2003). Lemaire subsequently taught legal studies at university level and worked in a law firm, before working at the British House of Commons as a researcher for the former Labour MP and Minister Denis MacShane.

Lemaire lived in London with her husband and two children from 2002 to 2014 before relocating to Paris.

Political career

Lemaire served as Secretary of the French Socialist Party (PS) in London from 2008 until her election to the National Assembly in 2012. According to Le Point, she turned down a ministerial post in Jean-Marc Ayrault's second government because as a mother of two young children, she had no desire to leave London. She has served as Chair of the UK-France Parliamentary Friendship Group. She did, however, accept an appointment as Minister of State for Digital Affairs in Valls' new government in April 2014.

Member of the National Assembly

In 2012 Lemaire was returned as Deputy for one of the eleven newly created constituencies, each elected by French overseas citizens to the French National Assembly. The constituency she represented as inaugural Deputy includes all registered French citizens living in the ten countries throughout Northern Europe—Iceland, Norway, Denmark (including the Faroe Islands and Greenland), Sweden, Finland, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. As of 2011, it recorded 140,731 French citizens on its electoral roll, with the vast majority (113,655) living in the United Kingdom, which has the third-largest French expat population in the world. Consequently, her election campaign received considerable attention at the time from the British press.

Having won 55% of the vote, during her term as Deputy she regularly appeared in the British media regarding French politics. In May 2014, upon assuming French governmental ministerial office, Lemaire resigned her parliamentary seat and was succeeded by Christophe Premat.

Secretary of State for Digital Affairs

Upon joining the Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs in Paris, Lemaire had been a leading proponent of net neutrality legislation.

She was involved in the French Tech movement, which unites French digital startups worldwide.

She resigned from the position in February 2017 to focus on the Socialist Party's candidate campaign for French presidential election. She then joined the campaign to retain her seat in the French Parliament but was severely defeated by Alexandre Holroyd of La République En Marche!

Post-politics

In February 2018, Lemaire took a job with the consulting firm Roland Berger.

References

References

1. (18 June 2012). "Législatives 2012 : Londres et l'Europe du Nord élisent Axelle Lemaire (PS)". HuffPost.
2. (27 February 2017). "Axelle Lemaire, secrétaire d'Etat chargée du numérique, démissionne du gouvernement". Le Monde.
3. (16 June 2012). "The Franco-British Connections". Fb-connections.org.
4. (18 June 2012). "Tate Modern made to reprint Hirst catalogue". London Evening Standard.
5. (20 June 2012). "Axelle Lemaire: Canadian wins bid for French parliament seat – in London". Canada.com.
6. "Accueil | PS – Parti socialiste". Parti socialiste.
7. (22 June 2012). "Hollande a voulu recruter une ministre sur Canal+". Le Point.
8. over a year left to listen. (1 January 1970). "Woman's Hour, Women in Greece, Gender Pay Audits, Portrait Painting, Axelle Lemaire". BBC.
9. (21 September 2012). "She got the va-va-vote...Axelle Lemaire is Hollande's woman in London". London Evening Standard.
10. Nationale, Assemblée. "Mme Axelle Lemaire - Mandat clos - Français établis hors de France (3e circonscription) - Assemblée nationale".
11. "Axelle Lemaire (Secrétaire d'Etat chargée du numérique) : "Le principe de Neutralité du Net devrait être inscrit dans la loi"".
12. (6 June 2017). "France's diaspora: Expats voted in droves for Emmanuel Macron's party". The Economist.
13. Antoine Boudet. (12 February 2018). "Axelle Lemaire rejoint le bureau parisien de Roland Berger". Les Échos.