No Parisians allowed! Travelling to Metz on Friday 25 November, Bruno Retailleau took great care to reserve his only public appearance for local journalists at a press conference that was billed as informal, and scheduled at the end of another day in the field for the man who has been travelling with the discipline of a soldier-monk since his appointment to Beauvau two months ago. A portfolio that every slightly ambitious politician dreams of, even when he doesn’t shave in the morning.

“I’m a provincial,” the minister from Vendée reminded us, after meeting with the police, the gendarmerie, the prefecture, administrative staff and local councillors. Like François Grosdidier, the mayor of Metz, “a long-standing friend.” For a long time, the two men wore the same hat, that of the Les Républicains (LR) party. But Grosdidier slammed the door after Éric Ciotti was elected president (which he has since left, joining forces with the Rassemblement national). Retailleau, on the other hand, stayed on. Since prime minister Michel Barnier, also a LR member, appointed him minister of the interior, he has become the media darling of a government that has few heavyweights or people who are well known to the general public. The LR party, however, lost by a wide margin in July’s early legislative elections and is consequently under-represented in France’s National Assembly, the equal of Luxembourg’s Chamber of Deputies.

Ode to François Grosdidier

Ever since he took office, Retailleau has been hammering home the message of security. His credo. “Order, order, order,” he said when he took up his post, when discussing his very first projects. “I’m taking a firm stance,” he repeated in Metz, his words dry and his silhouette matching his own.

After a few minutes, Retailleau uttered the word for the first time: “We have a kind of wilding [ensauvagement in French, editor’s note] of society, although in Moselle we are getting good results in terms of security. Safety is everyone’s business. We won’t succeed if local authorities and mayors don’t do their bit.”

For him, Grosdidier ticks all the boxes. In 2020, the mayor won the town hall by making security a central theme of his campaign. “The municipal police forces are the embodiment of the mayor’s policing powers. I salute François Grosdidier for his exemplary work.”

There was only one step from security to immigration, and he took it with the confidence of someone who knows why he was appointed to the job: “France is an open society, not a racist one, but no one can put up with too many [illegal immigrants],” he insisted.

For Retailleau (who will be 64 in a few days’ time), a proponent of a right-wing stance that could be described as conservative, “the fight against illegal immigration is a major concern for the French. And this is the case throughout Europe. All people want the same thing. And when governments don’t listen to them, voters oust them and replace them with populist governments.”

Léon Gloden called it

In Metz, Retailleau claimed to have had an exchange with his Luxembourg counterpart home affairs minister  (CSV) a few days ago. In front of the microphones, the CSV minister’s name certainly stuck on the tip of his tongue. He hesitated. But he assured his opposite number that he had reassured him about border controls. This is a sensitive issue now that Germany has decided to raise its voice on the matter.

“Luxembourg wanted this dialogue to ensure that the rules would not be different. They won’t be. My intention is not to annoy border workers,” explained Retailleau. “I also contacted our German friends, because I got the impression that they had a stricter practice compared to our fellow citizens,” he then smiled.

“Holding our borders”

In Luxembourg, during one of his first trips to a meeting of EU interior ministers, Retailleau tabled a request to amend the directive on returns. “Our objective is to control our borders. Unfortunately, we have a directive that doesn’t allow us to do that,” he complained.

For the rest, Retailleau followed the expected line, which is classic given his pedigree. He promised to “relaunch family policy” and to be tough on illegal occupations of land by travellers (a major issue in Moselle, where mayors say they have been abandoned by the state), in particular “by hitting them in the wallet.” “How did you get those big cars? Show us the proof,” he said.

“Paris doesn’t know everything”

Finally, Retailleau sang the tune of proximity: “The territorial state must be organised on the basis of the départements,” he sketched out. “The departmental level is the right size. It’s the right size to intervene. The further we move away from our fellow citizens, the less trust there is. Democracy is a human geography.”

For him, “Paris doesn’t know everything.” “We make rules in Paris, but are they good for Moselle?” Well, it was to Paris, after all, that he had to return. So, at 5.30pm, the session was adjourned. A TGV was waiting for him.

This article was originally published in .