Sylvie Goulard

Sylvie Goulard (born 6 December 1964) is a French politician and civil servant who served as Deputy Governor of the Banque de France from 2018 to 2022.

She was only the second woman to head the ministry, which reverted to its pre-1974 name of Ministry of the Armed Forces.

Goulard was replaced by Florence Parly, a former executive and budget official, in the 21 June government reshuffle.

Sylvie Goulard worked in the Legal Affairs Directorate of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs from 1989 until 1999.

She served in particular on the French team responsible for negotiating German reunification.

From 1993 to 1996, she worked at the Conseil d’État (State Council), after which she returned to the Policy Planning Department of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where she was responsible for European issues in conjunction with the equivalent department of the German government.

From 1999 to 2001, she was an associate researcher at the French Centre de Recherches Internationales.

As a political advisor to Romano Prodi when he was president of the European Commission, from 2001 to 2004, Goulard followed the work of the convention presided by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing which was primarily made up of members of national parliaments, who had been charged by the European Council to draft a European constitution.

Goulard's work focuses on the necessity of pursuing European integration whilst also inviting increased public debate about European questions.

Europe's citizens must become more engaged with its development in the future.

They need to be informed and active: and to achieve this cultural and professional exchanges and learning foreign languages are essential.

Between 2005 and 2009 she taught at the College of Europe in Bruges.

She speaks fluent English, German and Italian language.

At the end of 2006 Goulard was elected president of the Mouvement Européen-France (ME-F), succeeding Pierre Moscovici, who had also been a candidate.

She was re-elected as president in December 2008.

Le Mouvement Européen-France regularly organises meetings, conferences and debates which aim are to enable a dialogue between political figures, experts and the general public.

A native of Marseille, Goulard served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for West France from 2009 until 2014.

As an MEP she was a member of the Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs and an ALDE group coordinator, as well as a substitute member of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development between 2009 and 2014 and Committee on Constitutional Affairs between 2014 and 2017.

Goulard was first elected Member of the European Parliament in the 2009 elections.

Throughout her time in parliament, she served on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

In 2009 became a substitute member of the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee and in 2014, she became a substitute member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs.

In that capacity, she served as rapporteur on budgetary surveillance in the Eurozone.

In addition to her committee assignments, Goulard served as chairwoman of the European Parliament Intergroup on "Extreme Poverty and Human Rights".

In 2010 she participated in the creation of the Euro-federalist interparliamentarian Spinelli Group.

She served as a foreign affairs advisor; Goulard also is a former president of the Mouvement européen-France, the oldest pluralist association defending the European ideal.

On 15 September 2010, Goulard supported the new initiative Spinelli Group, which was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU).

Other prominent supporters are: Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Guy Verhofstadt, Isabelle Durand as well as Jacques Delors, Joschka Fischer, Andrew Duff and Elmar Brok.

On the national level, François Bayrou included Goulard in his shadow cabinet in 2010; in this capacity, Goulard served as opposition counterpart to Ministry of European Affairs Laurent Wauquiez.

She was reelected in the 2014 election for South-East France.

In November 2016, Goulard officially announced her candidacy for the office of President of the European Parliament; the post eventually went to Antonio Tajani.

During her time in parliament, Goulard continued to write regularly in a wide range of both French (Le Monde, La Croix, Libération) and international (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Financial Times particularly) newspapers.

Goulard was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron Minister of the Armed Forces on 17 May, in the First Government of Edouard Philippe.

In this capacity, she ranked above her immediate predecessor and foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in the government hierarchy.

Prior to this, Goulard briefly served as Minister of the Armed Forces from 17 May to 21 June 2017 in the First Philippe government.

In 2017, Goulard joined the newly formed En Marche! party.

Goulard graduated with a law degree from the Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III and studied at both Sciences Po in Paris and the École nationale d'administration (ÉNA).

She had stepped down after an inquiry over alleged misuse of payments for assistants in the European Parliament was opened on 20 June 2017.

On 17 January 2018, Goulard was appointed Deputy Governor of the Banque de France, succeeding Denis Beau.

In 2020, she was also appointed by the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe to serve as a member of the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, chaired by Mario Monti.

She is in charge of European and international topics, including preparations for G7 and G20 summits.