It indeed surveyed Brussels for a long time

A photo of it at eighteen years with John Paul II, another ten years later with Jacques Chirac, a third more recent with European Commissioner Michel Barnier: the Office of the 13eétage of the Berlaymont building, where to sit with a view of Brussels the President of the European Commission and the 13 members of his cabinet, Laurence de Richemont has not finished to develop it. The new Adviser to José Manuel Barroso responsible for industry, trade and research is sticking to a map, in order to have the eyes all the countries which the Union is a partner. But it is mainly to the France that his eyes could be: because if the President of the Commission has recruited this European official after seven years spent in Paris, where she was still a few months ago the permanent representation of the Commission, it is also to strengthen its links with the French authorities. "It is well journalists, parliamentarians and more generally all actors of civil society in France, explains Michel Barnier. But it also has the experience of the offices of European Commissioners.

It indeed surveyed Brussels for a long time. Beginning of 1995, it crosses the Quiévrain to follow Yves Thibault de Silguy, met at the Secretariat General for European Affairs, in Paris, while he is Secretary General and she responsible for development assistance. It will advise the Commissioner who will be the euro on the baptismal font on the aspects World Bank and IMF. "When we arrived, few people believed", she recalls.

Passion for theatre

The fall of the Santer Commission, this "bosseuse" - Yves Thibault de Silguy recalled the weekend where she had to summarize the 600 pages of the memoirs of Jean Monnet - was recruited by the Dutch Frits Bolkestein, the Commissioner of the internal market for services both decried in France directive. "A scholar doubled a francophile, passing his time to ask me on Balzac and Mallarmé glues", said. Responsible for the integration of financial services, she battle a year and a half with the Parliament to give birth to three European committees of regulation for Bank and insurance markets. "It is on this basis that Jacques de Larosière was able to make its proposals to create of real European supervisory authorities," she explains.

In Europe, fell almost by chance. "At Sciences po, it did not speak too much of the European dimension to the people of my generation", tells this reserved, born in 1961, mother of a young boy and woman married to a former consultant at Lazard. So technologically savvy that talented travel for languages - she comes to the Portuguese-, she saw her first experience abroad in 1984, when the ENA, in the automotive crisis, sends it on probation in the financial Department of the Detroit City Hall. A shock, which her memories also moved that its passage in the same year by the Prefecture of Avignon, where this passion for theatre, which took courses with Daniel Mesguich at the American Center, spent his nights to devour the third stage of Ariane Mnouchkine. It shall abandon theatre. But his taste for international will not leave. Or the Mairie de Paris, where she will be responsible for between 1988 and 1991 to orchestrate the movement of former Prime Minister and not yet President Jacques Chirac from abroad. Or the Quai d'Orsay, where it will specialize then on the Japan... in Asia, capped by Jean - David Levitte, management today diplomatic adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy.