Sébastien Lecornu, appointed prime minister on Tuesday, September 9, did not even have to ask Philippe Gustin to become his chief of staff. "For both of us, it was obvious that I would follow him if he was appointed," Gustin told Le Monde. After seven years working together at the departmental council of Eure in Normandy (2015-2017), at the Ministry for Overseas Territories (2020-2022), and the Ministry of the Armed Forces (2022-2023), the Lecornu-Gustin duo is "highly accustomed to working together," as a former state prefect put it. "They know each other inside out."

Gustin's career has been far from ordinary. The 65-year-old son of a soldier, from a family of distillers in Fougerolles, eastern France, first worked as a primary school teacher in France and then in Germany, through the French-German Youth Office. He became deputy director of courses at the Institut Français in Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall, then cultural attaché at the French embassy in Austria. In 1999, he was admitted to the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration for top civil servants.

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