(LREM), he was Secretary of State for European Affairs from 2008 to 2009 and Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fishing from 2009 to 2012 under President Nicolas Sarkozy.

[1][2] He is the son of Maurice Le Maire, an executive at the oil company Total, and Viviane Fradin de Belâbre, a headmistress of private Catholic schools, mainly Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague.

[11] Following several roles in Government including one working directly with Dominique de Villepin, Le Maire was chosen to be political advisor to the Prime Minister.

[4][5] After becoming a political advisor to the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), Le Maire was appointed Secretary of State in charge of European Affairs, replacing Jean-Pierre Jouyet, in December 2008, serving until 2009.

[14] Le Maire has since distanced himself from his party, calling for the right to work constructively with Macron to ensure the president's five years in office succeeds and prevents the far-right National Front making further electoral inroads.

By November 2017, Le Maire was reported to explore his options to succeed Jeroen Dijsselbloem as the next President of the Eurogroup;[20] the role of which was eventually given to Mário Centeno of Portugal.

[24] In October 2023, he participated in the first joint cabinet retreat of the German and French governments in Hamburg, chaired by Scholz and Macron.

During the conservative primaries in 2016, Le Maire shifted to the right, taking a tough stance on law and order and national identity issues.

[37] Le Maire has set out a free-market economic agenda, calling for the privatisation of France's labour offices, the end of subsidised jobs and capping of welfare benefits.

[3] Since taking office, he has steered Macron's drive to lighten the government touch on the economy and cut red-tape, and is overseeing a push to privatize airports and other state-controlled companies.

[38] In 2016, however, Le Maire was quoted as saying the prospect of Britain leaving the European Union was a "fabulous opportunity for France" as it would remove the bloc's main champion of deregulation.

[42] Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Le Maire and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz were credited as instrumental in overcoming Dutch and Italian resistance and securing the EU's 500 billion euros emergency deal to provide financial aid to workers, companies and governments struggling as a result of the virus.

[44] On Brexit itself, Le Maire caused controversy on 20 July 2017 when he told the French Parliament's economic affairs committee: "The United Kingdom has a remaining balance to pay to the EU budget of €100 billion"[45] The view held by Le Maire has been shared by European Leaders since April 2017 with some of them believing the "divorce-bill" will lead the UK to owing the European Union £50 billion[46] He also promised to set up a special court to handle English-law cases for financial contracts after Brexit during a conference in New York.

[3] He has argued for a reinforced European defense policy to secure the bloc's exterior borders and fight terrorism, with more spending on the military by Germany in particular.

[55] In 2023, his novel Fugue Américaine, about the pianist Vladimir Horowitz, was criticized, notably for its inclusion of an explicit sex scene, in the French media.