The green leftie lawmaker taking on Europe’s economy

BRUSSELS ― If lobbyists and the finance industry were hoping for a more malleable chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs — well, they just had their hopes dashed.

For the next five years, ECON will be led by the Frenchwoman Aurore Lalucq, a member of European Parliament with the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) ― and someone with true leftie credentials.

Take 2017, when she collaborated with ex-Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in his DiEM25 political project. Well to the left of the S&D, Varoufakis made his name with an unsuccessful attempt to face down the Troika — the country’s international creditors — during Greece’s debt crisis.

And after she got elected in 2019, she made financial services firm Blackrock a favorite punching bag. Along with The Left group’s Manon Aubry, Lalucq campaigned against the European Commission’s selection of the asset management company to draft a report on sustainable investment.

Government debt

Before her conversion to politics, Lalucq was an academic first and foremost, one interested in social and political questions. Ecology — and its intersection with the economy — looms large in her past. She was one of the founding members of, and until 2019 helped lead, the Veblen Institute, a foundation dedicated to economic and policy issues tied to the green transition.

Now 45, she was first elected to the Parliament with the political party Place Publique, which she co-leads along with Raphaël Glucksmann.

A move that likely didn’t win her many friends among her northern European colleagues was when she called on the European Central Bank to write off government debt in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Legislatively speaking, Lalucq’s focus in her previous term was on taxation, where she was the lead negotiator on two files. The MEP also spearheaded a citizen’s initative aimed at increasing taxes on the ultra-rich.

Lalucq was an academic first and foremost, one interested in social and political questions. | Magali Cohen/Getty Images

She was also the lead lawmaker for ESG (environmental, social and governance) ratings rules in the European Union — where, according to officials involved in the negotiations, she was seen as a competent negotiator, rigorous on technical detail. And she was co-president of the Green New Deal inter-group.

Biden fan

The S&D’s choice of Lalucq for the position of chair has raised eyebrows among colleagues skeptical of her left-wing background. “She’s too extreme to be able to build bridges with all groups as chair,” one Parliament official who’s worked with her previously told POLITICO.

But there are signs that the pugnacious legislator is perhaps smoothing some of her sharper edges. In a recent interview, Lalucq praised the more collegial approach taken by the Parliament, in contrast to the “posturing” that goes on in the lawmaking chambers in her native France. The MEP also had generous words for United States President Joe Biden, who is certainly not a political radical.

Previewing the direction she wants to take the committee in the years ahead, the EU lawmaker said now that the green transition is underway, ECON would have to work “to ensure the European Union’s place in global industrial competition, particularly in the face of the Chinese and American behemoths.”

She was born in in Longjumeau on the outskirts of Paris and completed her higher education in the French capital, studying development economics at the Sorbonne.

Lalucq was chosen to lead the ECON committee today with 38 votes in favor, 8 against and 4 abstentions. She replaced Irene Tingali, who was also a member of S&D.