French politician (born 1989)
Pierre Person (born 22 January 1989) is a French politician who served as the member of the National Assembly for the 6th constituency of Paris from 2017 until 2022. A member of La République En Marche! (LREM), his constituency covers parts of the 11th and 20th arrondissements.[1] Person is considered a close ally to President Emmanuel Macron in Parliament.[2]
Political career
During his studies at the University of Poitiers, Person volunteered as the local chairman of the left-wing National Union of Students of France (UNEF). He was also a member of the Socialist Party until 2012.[3] Ahead of the 2012 French presidential election, he worked for the campaign of Socialist candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn.[4]
In 2015, Person co-founded "Les Jeunes avec Macron" (JAM) with three friends – Sacha Houlié, Florian Humez and Jean Gaborit –[5] which had more than 22,000 members by September 2017.[6] In March 2016, he helped launch “La Gauche Libre” (“The Free Left”), a think-tank advocating “left-wing liberalism” as represented by Emmanuel Macron.[7] He later joined Macron's campaign staff ahead of the 2017 presidential elections.[8]
Person has been a member of the National Assembly since the 2017 elections. In parliament, he first served on the Finance Committee from 2017 until 2018,[9] where he was the rapporteur on the Ministry of Culture's annual budget.[10] Since 2019, he has been a member of both the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Committee on Sustainable Development and Spatial Planning.[11] Person was later appointed as co-rapporteur of a parliamentary mission on crypto assets, which published its conclusions in January 2019.[12]
In November 2018, following the resignation of Christophe Castaner from the position as chairman of LREM, Person briefly considered a candidacy to succeed him but later withdrew from the race for the party leadership;[13] instead, Stanislas Guerini was elected. Person later became Guerini's deputy.[14] In September 2020, he stepped down from that role because of disagreements over the direction of the party; he remained an LREM member.[15]
Person was not seeking re-election in the 2022 French legislative election.[16]
Political positions
In May 2018, Person co-sponsored an initiative in favour of a bioethics law extending to homosexual and single women free access to fertility treatments, such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), under France's national health insurance; it was one of the campaign promises of President Emmanuel Macron and marked the first major social reform of his five-year term.[17][18]
In 2019, Person was one of five members of the LREM parliamentary group who joined a cross-party initiative to legalize the distribution and use of cannabis.[19][20]
Controversy
In 2022, Politico Europe reported that Person had been in talks with potential partners and investors to create a European stablecoin with Carrefour-owned fintech company Market Pay after having been at the forefront of efforts to draft France's cryptocurrency legislation.[21]
