President of the European Democratic Party, François Bayrou is the president of the French member party Mouvement Démocrate, or MoDem. A fervent humanist, he was first appointed from 2004 to 2019 as co-chair of the EDP with Francesco Rutelli. A pillar of the French political landscape, he was appointed High Commissioner for Planning in September 2020 by French President Emmanuel Macron. Prior to that, he renounced his candidacy for the 2017 French presidential election, committing himself to Emmanuel Macron under the nascent movement En Marche! At the local and regional levels, he is mayor of Pau and president of the Pau Béarn Pyrénées agglomeration community. He was first elected to both positions in 2014, winning re-election in 2022. President of the MoDem since 2007, he has previously held elective office at European and national level. He was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2002 and a member of the French National Assembly from 2002 to 2012, from 1997 to 1999 and from 1986 to 1993. A candidate for the French presidency in 2007, where he obtained 18.57% of the vote in the first round, he was President of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) from 1998 to 2007 and Minister of National Education from 1993 to 1997. He is the author of several books, including Abus de pouvoir published in 2009, État d'urgence in 2012 and Résolution française in 2017. Attached to the land and culture of the French Pyrenees, he was born on May 25, 1951 in Bordères, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and raised by a family of small farmers, with a modest daily life enriched by books. Raised in a strict and open-minded educational household, he inherited a civic spirit, a sense of solidarity and a genuine curiosity for politics. He obtained his baccalaureate at the Lycée de Nay and continued his higher studies at the University of Bordeaux.