Yaël Braun-Pivet

Yaël Braun-Pivet (; born 7 December 1970) is a French lawyer and politician who has served as President of the French National Assembly since 28 June 2022. She is the first woman to hold this position. A member of Renaissance (RE), she was previously Minister of Overseas Territories under Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne from May to June in 2022. She has been a member of the French National Assembly since 2017, representing the department of Yvelines.

Background
Braun-Pivet was born Yaël Braun in Nancy in Eastern France. Her paternal grandparents were Jewish and had settled in France in the 1930s in order to escape antisemitism. Her grandfather was a Polish tailor while her grandmother was German. After World War II her grandfather received the French Resistance Medal. Braun-Pivet's mother had grown up in care.

Braun-Pivet attended a Jewish school in Strasbourg and went on to study law at Paris Nanterre University. After practising as a criminal lawyer for several years, she followed her husband, an executive with L'Oréal, to Taiwan and Japan, where the two youngest of their five children were born. On their return to France in 2012, Braun-Pivet took up voluntary work with Restaurants du Cœur (a French charity which distributes food to those in need), where she organised free legal advice for people who could not afford access to justice.

Political career
Braun-Pivet, representing Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance Party, was elected as a member of the French National Assembly for the 5th constituency of Yvelines in June 2017. That same month she was elected chair of the Law Committee. She led the work of the committee on a 2017 law regulating conflict of interest among elected officials, which had been initiated as a consequence of the Fillon affair. In 2018, when she was chair of the inquiry into the Benalla Affair, she was criticised for her refusal to summon Alexis Kohler, general secretary of the president's office, to give evidence.

In September 2018, after François de Rugy's appointment to the government, Braun-Pivet announced her candidacy for the presidency of the National Assembly; she eventually withdrew and instead endorsed Richard Ferrand.

In February 2021, Braun-Pivet received the support of the entire National Assembly after being targeted by an email with anti-Semitic insults and threats; shortly after, the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation.

Braun-Pivet was appointed Minister of Overseas Territories in May 2022, but stepped down a month later when she was elected President of the National Assembly, the first woman to hold the position.

Political positions
In July 2019, Braun-Pivet voted in favor of the French ratification of the European Union's Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada.

In 2021, Braun-Pivet proposed a new ad-hoc body to better supervise the government's decision-making process on the COVID-19 pandemic in France.

Also in 2021, Braun-Pivet voted against the party line and instead supported draft legislation proposed by the Liberties and Territories group aimed at legalising assisted suicide.

See also
 2017 French legislative election

References

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1970 births
Living people
French people of Polish-Jewish descent
Deputies of the 15th National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic
French women lawyers
Renaissance (French political party) politicians
21st-century French women politicians
Jewish French politicians
Politicians from Nancy, France
Women members of the National Assembly (France)
Deputies of the 16th National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic
French Ministers of Overseas France
Presidents of the National Assembly (France)
Women legislative speakers
20th-century French lawyers
Members of Parliament for Yvelines
Paris Nanterre University alumni