Christophe Béchu

Christophe Béchu (born 11 June 1974) is a French politician from Angers, in Maine-et-Loire. He was elected mayor of Angers and president of the Angers Loire Métropole intercommunal authority in 2014. Since 9 October 2021 he has been secretary-general of Horizons, the centre-right party created by former prime minister Édouard Philippe.

A graduate of Sciences Po in Paris and the father of three children, Béchu began in elected office at 21 as a municipal councillor in the neighbouring commune of Avrillé. He presided over the general council of Maine-et-Loire from 2004 to 2014 and, in that role, led the Union for a Popular Movement list in the 2010 regional election in Pays de la Loire. He lost the Angers mayoral election narrowly in 2008, won it in 2014, and was returned in the first round in 2020. He also sat in the European Parliament and, from his election on 25 September 2011 until 1 October 2017, in the Senate for Maine-et-Loire, where he was secretary of the European affairs committee and ended his term in the group of The Republicans.

Béchu left The Republicans in 2017 and supported President Emmanuel Macron. In May 2022 he entered the government of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne as minister delegate for local authorities. On 4 July 2022, after Amélie de Montchalin lost her seat in the National Assembly, he was promoted to minister for ecological transition and territorial cohesion. He was kept in that post when Gabriel Attal became prime minister in January 2024. At the time of the July 2022 appointment, Libération described him as the sixth minister in charge of ecology in five years and noted that the portfolio had fallen in protocol order. In July 2024, giving an account of two years in office as a resigning minister, he said ecology had not been “at the heart of political concerns” since the spring.

On 23 September 2024 he left the ministry and was elected mayor of Angers again the same day, after Jean-Marc Verchère, who had held the office during Béchu’s time in government, stepped down. At the municipal elections of 15 and 22 March 2026 his list, Angers pour Vous, led the first round with 49.48 percent of the vote and won the second round with 59.03 percent (26,624 votes) against Romain Laveau’s united-left list, taking 47 of 59 council seats, according to provisional figures published by the Ministry of the Interior.

Early life and education

Family and schooling

Christophe Béchu was born on 11 June 1974 in Angers, in the department of Maine-et-Loire. He is the eldest of five children of two doctors in the city. His mother, Marie-Anne Béchu, is a physician; his father, also a physician, was ordained a deacon of the Catholic Church. A 2010 profile in Le Monde presented the household as a family of Angevin notables and Béchu as a practising Catholic. In a 2026 interview he described that childhood religious education as attached to the Church, and to what he called the Christian injunction to care for one another, but not as a rigid upbringing. He married at 23 and has three children.

Le Parisien Étudiant lists him among former pupils of the Lycée David d'Angers, the public secondary school in the centre of Angers.

Studies and first employment

The French government's biographical note states that he graduated in 1996 from Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and that he then obtained a diplôme d'études approfondies (DEA) in public law in 1998 and, in 2003, a diplôme d'études supérieures spécialisées (DESS) in the health and social interventions of local authorities. Profiles in Les Échos in 2005 and 2018 record the same diplomas, describing the DESS as related to local government, and the 2005 piece already presented him as a lawyer as well as a political-studies graduate. Ouest-France reported in 2017 that he had not been admitted to the École nationale d'administration and that, while president of the Maine-et-Loire departmental council, he continued the studies required to qualify as a lawyer. Le Figaro has called him a lawyer by training and a graduate of Sciences Po, and a figure of the moderate Catholic right of western France.

His years in Paris overlapped with local political work. Le Monde wrote that, while other students remained in the capital, he took the train back to Angers each Friday and continued to Avrillé, a commune on the northern edge of the agglomeration, where he campaigned after winning a seat on the municipal council at 21. That first mandate was won under Marc Laffineur, Avrillé's mayor and a deputy, for whom Béchu also worked as a parliamentary assistant. He has located the start of his engagement in the Union for French Democracy and in a "yes" in the French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, a question on which, he told Les Échos, his parents were divided.

Maine-et-Loire and local office

Avrillé and the general council

Christophe Béchu's first offices were in Avrillé, on the northern edge of Angers, under Marc Laffineur, the commune's mayor and a deputy of the Union for French Democracy. At the end of his first year at Sciences Po he interned in Laffineur's office, and in the mid-1990s was hired as a parliamentary assistant, with Emmanuel Capus. In 1995, still aged 20, he was placed on the municipal list; Le Figaro Magazine wrote that he became a councillor on his 21st birthday and then deputy mayor, a start Ouest-France also dates to 21.

In 2001 Laffineur gave up his seat on the general council of Maine-et-Loire for the canton of Angers-Nord-Ouest and sent Béchu, then 26, to contest it. André Lardeux, the council's president for the Rally for the Republic, later said a win had looked unlikely until the campaign turned the first round—Béchu's first election in his own name. On 18 March he was elected for Liberal Democracy with 4,136 votes (51.03 percent) to 3,969 (48.97 percent) for the Socialist Daniel Chéret; 8,521 of 13,604 registered voters took part, and the outgoing majority kept 29 of 41 seats. He was then given the departmental fire and rescue service (SDIS), a post Lardeux said senior members had refused; Marc Goua, a Socialist councillor, later called it Béchu's triumph.

Presidency of the departmental council

On 1 April 2004 the general council elected Béchu, aged 29, president in succession to Lardeux. Ouest-France has called him the youngest departmental president in France at that date; Le Figaro Magazine called the appointment an unquestionable French record, and Le Monde a record of precocity. The departmental archives list Christian Gillet, the next president, as elected on 28 April 2014.

Christophe Béchu, centre, with members of the Maine-et-Loire general council.

By January 2010 he was in a second term as president. After the partial cantonal renewal, the council reelected him on 31 March 2011 by 28 votes to 13 against the Socialist Jean-Luc Rotureau; Christian Gillet had put his name forward for the majority.

In 2005 the Angers assize court tried what Le Nouvel Obs called the largest case of child sexual abuse and incest yet brought to light in France, concerning offences against 45 children between January 1999 and February 2002. On 11 April Béchu, cited as the Union for a Popular Movement president responsible for child welfare and for maternal and infant protection, said follow-up by the social services had not failed. He had taken office only in April 2004. Social workers, he said, had no investigative powers and needed a family's request or consent, while the social-action code treated placement as exceptional: 41 reports, 18 for suspected sexual abuse, had reached prosecutors for 15 of 23 families, and 1,536 children, about one in 30, were in care.

From October 2006 Béchu chaired the public-interest group renamed Enfance en danger, which runs the national 119 helpline, succeeding Philippe Nogrix. The 2006 activity report, adopted on 10 October 2007 and signed by Béchu, states that Nogrix had presided from 2001 until October 2006.

Regional election of 2010

In 2010 the UMP sought to retake Pays de la Loire, which François Fillon had lost in 2004 to the Socialist Jacques Auxiette. Roselyne Bachelot, first designated to lead the list, withdrew: Les Échos said she lacked unanimous support on the right, while Le Monde reported the official reason as the influenza A pandemic. Nicolas Sarkozy then had the reluctant Béchu, aged 35, lead the presidential-majority list, after a call from Xavier Bertrand in late August 2009 and a meeting at the Élysée on 17 September.

The list joined the UMP to Philippe de Villiers's Movement for France and to centrists around Jean Arthuis, who abandoned a separate ticket that would have included the Democratic Movement. After François Bayrou spoke in Angers of a possible alliance with the left and ecologists if the MoDem stayed under 10 percent, Les Échos reported further defections to Béchu, while Europe Écologie ran alone. The same paper called his conditional support for the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport the main Green–Socialist dispute.

On 14 March the Interior Ministry recorded 386,479 votes (32.78 percent) for Béchu and 405,105 (34.36 percent) for Auxiette, with Europe Écologie at 160,831 (13.64 percent) and the National Front at 83,159 (7.05 percent), on a turnout of 48.23 percent. On 21 March Auxiette's united left won 702,163 votes (56.39 percent) and 63 of 93 seats; Béchu's list took 543,069 (43.61 percent) and 30 seats, with turnout at 51.78 percent.

European Parliament and the Senate

Member of the European Parliament

In the 7 June 2009 election to the European Parliament, Christophe Béchu headed the list “Quand l’Europe veut, l’Europe peut” in the West France constituency, presented for the presidential majority by the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), the Nouveau Centre and La Gauche moderne. It received 680,829 votes, 27.16 percent of votes cast, and three of nine seats, the others going to Élisabeth Morin-Chartier and Alain Cadec; turnout was 42.36 percent.

From 14 July 2009 to 31 December 2010 he sat in the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats), as a full member of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and the delegation for relations with Japan, and as a substitute on the foreign-affairs and budgetary-control committees. He spoke in plenary in October 2009 on the single common-market organisation and in July 2010 on agriculture and the reopening of talks with Mercosur, and on 14 September 2009 tabled a motion for a resolution on the dairy crisis.

He resigned with effect from 1 January 2011. On 17 January in Strasbourg, Parliament recorded the vacancy and the French authorities’ notification that Agnès Le Brun replaced him from the same date. On 1 April 2010, after the regional election in Pays de la Loire, Le Figaro reported that François Pinte, spokesman for Béchu’s list, had asked the Conseil d’État to annul the result over the use of local-authority communications, without contesting Jacques Auxiette’s victory. Auxiette’s campaign director, Christophe Clergeau, said the application was meant only to delay a choice among three offices: regional councillor, member of the European Parliament and president of the Maine-et-Loire general council.

Senator for Maine-et-Loire

On 25 September 2011 he led the majority list in the indirect election for the four Senate seats of Maine-et-Loire. Of 1,872 registered electors, 1,849 ballots were valid; his list took 561 votes, 30.34 percent, and two seats, for himself and Catherine Deroche, while Daniel Raoul’s left-wing list led with 701 votes, 37.91 percent, and the other two seats. An AFP dispatch listed him as elected for the UMP and as president of the general council.

The Senate dates the mandate from 1 October 2011 to 1 October 2017 and records that it ended because he did not stand again. On 6 October 2011 the European affairs committee, chaired by Simon Sutour, elected him a secretary, with André Gattolin and Richard Yung. The bureau chosen on 9 October 2014 named other secretaries: Colette Mélot, Louis Nègre and Patricia Schillinger. At the end of the term he sat on the laws committee—constitutional laws, legislation, universal suffrage, the rules and general administration—and in the Les Républicains group.

On 9 April 2013 he voted against article 1 of the bill opening marriage to couples of the same sex. The Senate adopted it by 179 votes to 157; of the UMP group, 123 voted against and five in favour. In April 2023, then a minister, he said on France 2 that he would vote yes if the question arose again.

In 2016 he reported, for the laws committee and then for the Senate side of the joint committee, on an organic bill and an ordinary bill to revise the presidential election, introduced in November 2015 on the initiative of Jean-Jacques Urvoas. The texts in his name were report no. 389 of 10 February 2016, joint-committee report no. 469 of 15 March, and report no. 510 of 30 March. He told the joint committee that the Senate accepted direct transmission of sponsorships to the Constitutional Council and full publication of them, with names withheld while they were collected, postponed a six-month campaign-account rule to the next election, and preferred polling stations to close at 7 p.m. The committees recorded that they could not agree a common text on either bill. Information reports in his name for the laws committee included no. 279 of 20 January 2012, on reform of the Schengen Area and criminal law, and no. 107 of 30 October 2013, on compensation for victims of offences.

Mayor of Angers

The 2008 and 2014 municipal elections

Béchu first stood for mayor of Angers, prefecture of Maine-et-Loire, on 9 and 16 March 2008. His list led the first round with 45.64% (23,089 votes) to 42.50% (21,502) for the outgoing Socialist Party mayor, Jean-Claude Antonini, on a turnout of 58.97%. On 16 March Antonini's union-of-the-left list won with 50.61% (27,750 votes) against 49.39% (27,083) for Béchu, a margin of 667 votes. Antonini took 45 council seats and Béchu 14; turnout rose to 63.50%. Le Monde reported that the count stayed open for much of the evening—Béchu was briefly given 50.29%—and that a city held by the left since 1977 had nearly changed hands. Béchu, then 33 and described as a rising figure of the Union for a Popular Movement, had led the first round but did not hold the lead.

He won six years later and ended that spell in office. Franceinfo called Angers, about 150,000 people, a city that had voted left since 1977, and reported that the UMP senator beat the Socialist incumbent Frédéric Béatse on 30 March 2014. Municipal archives list the Socialist mayors as Jean Monnier (1977–1998), Antonini (1998–2012) and Béatse (26 January 2012–4 April 2014). In the first round Béchu's UMP list, "Angers pour vous", took 35.91% (18,365 votes). Béatse's union-of-the-left list, "Aimer Angers", had 26.77% (13,691), and a separate left list led by Jean-Luc Rotureau 16.20% (8,288). Laurent Gérault (Union of Democrats and Independents) had 7.44% and Gaétan Dirand (National Front) 6.73%, on a turnout of 59.23%. In the runoff Béchu won 54.36% (27,975 votes) to Béatse's 45.63% (23,486), with 43 seats to 12 and turnout of 61.33%. The council elected him mayor on 4 April 2014.

City government, 2014–2022

He was re-elected at the first round on 15 March 2020. The Interior Ministry figures republished by Le Figaro give "Angers pour vous", classed as miscellaneous right, 57.82% (17,267 votes) and 49 of 59 seats. Silvia Camara-Tombini's union of the left took 16.80% (5,019 votes, five seats), Yves Aurégan's Europe Écologie-Les Verts list 14.08% (4,206, four seats) and Claire Schweitzer's miscellaneous-left list 5.12% (one seat). A National Rally list had 4.76% and Lutte Ouvrière 1.40%. Turnout was 34.25% (30,825 of 90,002 registered voters), at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in France. 20 Minutes reported that the council re-elected him unanimously on 25 May and described him as a former member of The Republicans invested by La République en marche. He asked the council for "an effort of humility" in the health crisis.

The largest project of the term was the tramway extension. The first line had opened in 2011, under the previous majority. In April 2014, as he took the agglomeration presidency, Béchu said a second line "could not be more than 8 km". By January 2022 it had become lines B and C, due in service in summer 2023. Corinne Bouchoux, Green vice-president for mobility, told 20 Minutes that daily ridership might rise from about 30,000 before the pandemic to 72,000, with about 100,000 people within 500 metres of a stop. The paper put the cost at €270 million, including €38 million from the region, the European Union and the state, and noted targets to cut the car's share of trips from 51% to 33%. The programme included twenty new Alstom trams; the majority refused calls for free transit. Bouchoux described Béchu, by then in Horizons, as the métropole president she reported to. France 3 reported the opening on 8 July 2023, after works it had costed at €285 million, adding about 10 km for a 22.7 km network: line B from Belle-Beille to Monplaisir via the centre, and line C using parts of A and B toward La Roseraie. Béchu attended as a former mayor and minister; Jean-Marc Verchère was then métropole president.

On the Maine, the city opened the esplanade Cœur de Maine, a lawn about 100 metres long, around 2019. In June 2020 it was closed for about a month after night-time noise, burnt grass and damaged sprinklers. Verchère, then first deputy, said young people had gathered there while other places were shut; the deputy Matthieu Orphelin asked for a partial daytime reopening, which the city declined while the turf was resown.

He stood down as mayor after joining the government of Élisabeth Borne. Named minister for ecological transition on 4 July 2022, he was not obliged to give up a local executive post: Ouest-France noted that Article 23 of the Constitution bars ministers only from a parliamentary mandate. He had said that, if the government received a confidence vote, he would hand over to Verchère before the summer break. On 18 July 2022 the council elected Verchère, his first deputy and a member of the Democratic Movement, as mayor. Verchère, also first vice-president of Angers Loire Métropole, was to lead both executives. Béchu remained a member of the two assemblies and had called the arrangement an interim.

Angers Loire Métropole

The community council elected him president of Angers Loire Métropole on 24 April 2014, with 73 of 93 votes. He put employment and housing first, capped a second tram line at 8 km, and named the Biopole waste plant as another major dossier. He still held the presidency in January 2022, when lines B and C were presented as a métropole project. In July 2022 the office passed with the mayoralty to Verchère, until then first vice-president, who held it at the 2023 opening.

From the UDF to Horizons

Centre-right parties

Christophe Béchu’s party career began in the Union for French Democracy (UDF). Le Figaro dates that membership to his coming of age, and he told Les Échos that his first vote was a “yes” in the 1992 French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. By the 2010 regional elections, when he headed the presidential majority’s list in the Pays de la Loire, Le Monde presented him as a former UDF figure whose centrist profile was useful to the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). He remained in the UMP and then in The Republicans (Les Républicains, LR), the name the party later took, until 2017.

In the 2017 presidential campaign he was identified with the supporters of Alain Juppé and, after the right-wing primary, sponsored François Fillon. Between the rounds he moved toward Emmanuel Macron. Les Échos wrote that he had “clearly positioned himself” for Macron in that interval, and Ouest-France reported a column in Le Figaro, published two days before the runoff, in which the mayor of Angers called for a government of rally “beyond the cleavages.” Local Republicans told the same paper that the shift unsettled their legislative candidates.

On 6 December 2017 he announced that he was leaving LR. His statement regretted that the party had chosen to exclude those who had agreed “to commit themselves to the recovery of France alongside the president of the Republic,” and he had already ruled out taking part in the internal ballot, set for 10 December, that elected Laurent Wauquiez. He did not join La République en marche or Agir, the “constructive right” formed that autumn. He told Ouest-France that the decision had been maturing for nearly a year, that he would describe himself as divers droite — miscellaneous right — rather than as without a label, and that he recognised himself in the government’s action “with nuances.”

He stayed outside a national party for almost four years while remaining publicly aligned with Macron. In June 2019 he was a principal organiser of a tribune, signed by 72 mayors and local officials of the right and centre and published by Le Journal du dimanche, calling for the “success of the president of the Republic and of the government.” Le Monde also noted his support for Nathalie Loiseau’s Renaissance list at that year’s European elections, and Le Figaro placed the 2017 break in a longer rapprochement with Édouard Philippe, another former Juppé supporter.

Horizons and the presidential majority

On 9 October 2021 Philippe launched Horizons in Le Havre. He presented it as a party meant to widen Macron’s support toward the right, said that his objective for 2022 was the president’s re-election, and promised mayors a distinct place in its organisation. Le Monde dates Béchu’s appointment as secretary-general to that day and later described the post as reinforcing the alliance with Philippe’s movement.

Horizons then sat in the presidential majority beside La République en marche — renamed Renaissance in May 2022 — and the Democratic Movement (MoDem). On 5 May 2022 the three formations launched the Ensemble confederation to run joint legislative candidates. Philippe and François Bayrou defended that confederal model against the single party Macron had recently favoured. Le Monde reported that, after months of dispute over investitures, Horizons was in line for 58 constituencies, the MoDem for about 101 to 110, and La République en marche for the remaining 400 or so.

Coverage in 2026 gave Béchu an organising role in Philippe’s presidential effort without treating it as a new affiliation. Le Figaro described the mayor of Angers, still secretary-general, as co-director of the campaign, at work on local committees and due to take the head of the party in October. Ouest-France reported that Philippe would leave Horizons’ executive presidency on 1 October and that Béchu would ensure the interim from that date, without, according to his entourage, becoming president himself.

Government minister, 2022–2024

Minister delegate for local authorities

On the proposal of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, appointed on 16 May 2022, President Emmanuel Macron named a government on 20 May. A decree of that day, published in the Journal officiel on 21 May, made Christophe Béchu a minister delegate (ministre délégué) attached jointly to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and to Amélie de Montchalin, minister for ecological transition and territorial cohesion, with responsibility for local authorities (collectivités territoriales). Ministers delegate named in the decree sat in the Council of Ministers for business within their attributions. The Élysée called the first full cabinet for 23 May.

Decree no. 2022-869 of 8 June 2022 gave him, by delegation, Darmanin's powers over decentralisation and de Montchalin's over decentralisation and territorial cohesion. He was to propose and execute measures on local authorities, take any further task either minister assigned, and sign in their names within that field.

He was still mayor of Angers and president of Angers Loire Métropole, posts held since 2014, and since 9 October 2021 secretary-general of Horizons, the party of former prime minister Édouard Philippe. Nothing in the appointment required him to leave the town hall. At the end of May he told Ouest-France that, if Parliament gave the government its confidence, he would hand Angers to his first deputy, Jean-Marc Verchère, before the summer, while remaining on the municipal and metropolitan councils. The delegation ended on 4 July, when the same reshuffle named Caroline Cayeux, mayor of Beauvais and a member of Les Républicains, minister delegate for local authorities under both Darmanin and Béchu.

Minister for ecological transition and territorial cohesion

The decree of 4 July 2022, published on 5 July, ended de Montchalin's functions and appointed Béchu minister for ecological transition and territorial cohesion, the office he held until Michel Barnier's government was formed on 21 September 2024.

De Montchalin had lost her seat on 19 June, and the reshuffle replaced ministers beaten after Macron's camp lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly. Le Monde called Béchu Macron's sixth environment minister and read the appointment as a strengthening of the alliance with Horizons, using his local-government experience for an ecological policy applied in the territories. Energy remained a separate ministry: Agnès Pannier-Runacher stayed minister for the energy transition.

The decree placed under Béchu two ministers delegate, Clément Beaune for transport and Olivier Klein for the city and housing, and two secretaries of state, Bérangère Couillard for ecology and Dominique Faure for rural affairs, each sitting in cabinet for their own business. The sea stayed outside his department, with Hervé Berville as secretary of state under the prime minister. On 20 July the Council of Ministers adopted the decrees that distributed powers in line with the composition of 4 July.

He gave up the mayoralty even though article 23 of the Constitution bars only a parliamentary mandate, not local office; Ouest-France treated resignation as custom. On 18 July the Angers council elected Verchère mayor by 49 votes out of 59, the opposition casting ten blank ballots. Béchu stayed a councillor, became first deputy, and said he could not combine 3,026 days as mayor with the charge from the prime minister and the president.

Gabriel Attal kept him when the Élysée announced a new government on 11 January 2024. The decree of that day again listed a minister for ecological transition and territorial cohesion, and Le Parisien reported that Béchu remained, preserving a Horizons full minister in the executive. Attribution decrees for the eleven ministers of full rank were published on 25 January, before the junior ministers had all been named.

Decree no. 2024-38 of 24 January 2024, published the next day and amended on 21 February, widened the post once the energy-transition ministry had disappeared. He kept sustainable development, territorial cohesion, biodiversity, risks, transport, housing and urbanism, and gained an explicit climate brief: greenhouse-gas emissions, energy efficiency and building renovation, decarbonisation and adaptation, exercised with the ministers concerned. Associating the economy minister, he defined nuclear safety and security, including the civil transport of radioactive and fissile material, and shared radiation protection with the labour, health and solidarity ministers. Maritime affairs, previously with a secretary of state under the prime minister, moved to him—navigation, maritime spatial planning, sea fisheries with the agriculture minister, the secretariat-general for the sea and the general inspectorate of maritime affairs. He represented the prime minister, who kept ecological and energy planning, in European and international negotiations on biodiversity, the environment and the circular economy, and held only joint, limited authority over the energy and climate directorate with the economy minister, and joint authority over local authorities with the interior minister.

After the 2024 snap elections, Macron accepted the Attal government's resignation on 16 July and left it, Béchu included, in charge of current affairs. Le Monde wrote that, named on 4 July 2022, he had headed the ministry much longer than his predecessors under Macron; on 19 September Béchu said it was long "because I will have been the person who served longest as ecology minister under Emmanuel Macron's presidencies."

A decree of 21 September 2024 composing Barnier's government, published the next day, omitted him and divided the portfolio. Pannier-Runacher became minister for ecological transition, energy, climate and risk prevention; Valérie Létard, minister for housing and urban renovation; and Catherine Vautrin, minister for partnership with the territories and decentralisation. Ouest-France reported that Pannier-Runacher's ministry was narrower than his, and that the handover was held on the morning of 23 September, before the new cabinet's first meeting that afternoon.

Ecological and territorial policy

Climate adaptation, water and land use

The main climate instrument of Béchu’s tenure at the Ministry of Ecological Transition was a reference warming trajectory for adaptation (TRACC). In February 2023 he said France had to cut emissions and also “prepare for the worst,” citing 1.7 °C of warming already and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings that the world was off course; at 4 °C, he said, two-thirds of Alpine ski resorts would lack snow and droughts would multiply. The reference scenario, consistent with policies and national contributions under the Paris Agreement, assumes about +3 °C globally by 2100 relative to the pre-industrial period, or about +4 °C over mainland France and Corsica, and is meant to be revised if the global path or the science changes. The National Council for the Ecological Transition backed that hypothesis on 4 May 2023, and a draft was consulted on from 23 May to 15 September. The third national adaptation plan that was to apply the trajectory had not appeared when he left office: Le Monde reported that publication, expected by the end of the first half of 2024, had been thrown off by the political calendar.

The water plan presented on 30 March 2023 contains 53 measures. They set a 10% cut in withdrawals by 2030 for all users, with local breakdowns and better metering, fewer leaks, 1,000 projects to reuse non-conventional water by 2027, and action on pollution and aquatic ecosystems. Béchu linked it to the 2022 drought—about 700 communes had lacked drinking water, on his count—and to networks losing about one litre of drinking water in five to leaks; he also said only 44% of water bodies were in good ecological status.

The Climate and Resilience Law of 22 August 2021 requires consumption of agricultural and natural land to be halved between 2021 and 2031, from about 250,000 to 125,000 hectares, and zero net artificialisation by 2050. A bill on support for local officials applying that rule passed on 12–13 July 2023 by 169 votes to 29 in the National Assembly and by 326 to 1 in the Senate. Béchu called it “no longer quite the Senate’s text, nor quite the Assembly’s, nor the government’s.” Projects of national interest stayed outside communal quotas but inside the national total of about 125,000 hectares. In April 2024 the ministry listed 424 such projects, 167 treated as immediately eligible—about half road or rail, 30% new factories—and kept every industrial scheme submitted. Béchu told Les Échos that if the decade’s reduction were 47% or 48% rather than 50%, “I will assume it”; lawyer Arnaud Gossement said the 2023 statute carried no sanction if the target was missed.

Renovation, consumption and fast fashion

From 1 January 2024 MaPrimeRénov’ was steered toward deeper “rénovations d’ampleur” and away from single measures such as a boiler or a roof. On 8 March the ecological-transition and housing ministries postponed most of those conditions to 1 January 2025, after builders said the reform had stopped worksites. Béchu said “a comprehensive renovation is better than a single measure, but a single measure is better than no renovation at all.” Households would no longer have to change their heating or produce an energy-performance diagnosis to qualify.

The repair bonus, from the 2020 anti-waste law and launched in December 2022, cuts the bill for repair of an out-of-warranty electrical or electronic product by a labelled repairer. From 1 January 2024 he doubled it for five common appliances, added €5 on more than twenty others, extended the list from 49 to 73 products, set €25 for a broken phone screen and raised it 20% for reused parts. In November 2023 it was also extended to clothing, household linen and shoes.

Anne-Cécile Violland, of Horizons, the party of Édouard Philippe, tabled on 30 January 2024 a bill on the environmental impact of textiles renewed at very short intervals. The government backed it for the group’s 14 March niche, including modulation of the eco-contribution, and Béchu announced a mid-March consultation on environmental labelling. She cited ADEME and Refashion figures of more than 100 billion garments sold worldwide each year and 3.3 billion textile products offered annually in France, and put the industry at 10% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. The Assembly adopted the bill at first reading on 14 March 2024 by 146 votes to zero. It defined very rapid renewal of collections, required reuse and repair messages, set a bonus-malus under extended producer responsibility and restricted advertising, including by influencers. The statute was promulgated only on 8 July 2026.

Assessment of the record

Le Monde wrote on 23 September 2024 that Béchu had lasted longer than his predecessors under Emmanuel Macron and left the image of a pragmatic minister, open to dialogue, but “too often unable to resist the executive’s arbitrations,” including an agricultural crisis “marked by very many environmental retreats.” Morgane Piederriere, of France Nature Environnement, credited him with listening in a high-turnover post, but said ecology remained “subject to the will of the president–prime minister couple, and to pressure from Bercy.” Kept aside from mitigation, which sat with the secretariat for ecological planning and energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher, he sponsored no major statute.

After Prime Minister Gabriel Attal paused the Ecophyto plan in February 2024, Béchu said no molecule had been authorised and that rules near homes and drinking-water catchments were unchanged; the pause, he said, was three weeks, until the Salon de l’agriculture, to discuss tools, including the French NODU indicator and a European alternative. The stated aim remained halving pesticide use by 2030 against 2015–2017. The High Council on Climate found in June 2024 that gross emissions had fallen faster in 2023 and that the pace was, for the first time, close to the 2030 path, while policy was still insufficiently aligned with carbon neutrality in 2050. It described adaptation as becoming institutionalised even as hazards intensified faster than the means deployed, and said adaptation and a just transition remained little taken into account.

Criticism and controversies

Attendance, allowances and travel

After entering the government of Élisabeth Borne in May 2022—first for local authorities, then, two months later, for ecological transition—Christophe Béchu stayed on the council of Angers. In July 2022 he exchanged the mayoralty with his first deputy, Jean-Marc Verchère of the Democratic Movement, and remained first deputy. He said this kept him in touch with the territory; his entourage added that it avoided promoting a colleague only to demote her later.

Le Monde reported in May 2024 that the post still paid €3,089.50 a month. At the meeting of 29 April, Socialist Party councillor Silvia Camara-Tombini said that from 26 September 2022 to that date he had attended, sometimes only in part, five of 20 municipal councils and three of 20 agglomeration councils, and none of the preparatory commissions. She asked that article 21 of the standing orders, which ties allowances to attendance, be applied, and later referred the payments to the prefect of Maine-et-Loire. The prefecture reviewed their legality; Courrier de l'Ouest reported that the prefect found nothing unlawful.

In December 2023 the Angevin review La Topette, taken up by Le Monde, listed six domestic trips between 31 July and 14 November on business aircraft of the École nationale de l'aviation civile in Toulouse, including a Beechcraft King Air 90: Paris–Montpellier, Angers–Perpignan, Angers–Grenoble–Angers, Paris–Lorient, Angers–Nice and Calais–Metz. His office confirmed them. At about one tonne of CO₂ an hour, La Topette put the six trips at nearly 23 tonnes. On franceinfo he said, "Je confirme et j'assume ces vols," citing the train under three hours, a case-by-case choice between three and four, and the plane beyond four. He put flying at about ten journeys out of more than 120, called four of them disaster visits, spoke of a "volonté polémique" from a locally partisan journal, and said he had not holidayed for three weeks in Polynesia.

Local environmental disputes

A low-emission zone began in central Angers on 1 January 2025. At the November 2024 council, where the item sat far down the agenda, Béchu, again mayor for Horizons, said it would affect "à peine 0,5 %" of vehicles—those first registered before 1997—with many exemptions. Yves Aurégan of Europe Écologie Les Verts called the scheme "un peu honteuse". Le Monde later reported that it covered vehicles first put into service before 1996—about 2% of the fleet, some 4,000 cars without a Crit'Air sticker—with exemptions for ambulances, removers, charities, refuse lorries and collectors' cars, and that no checks were made and no fine was set. Béchu said Angers was already well inside national and European air-quality standards and on course for those of the World Health Organization by the end of 2030, and that penalties would follow only if thresholds were exceeded. The article's headline reported that he did not want to "emmerder les gens" with the zone.

In March 2024 opponents denounced the felling of eight Japanese elms, several decades old, in a fire-station yard opposite the Château d'Angers, for a 300-space car park decided when he was mayor. EELV councillors Elsa Richard and Yves Aurégan called it "l'abattage de la honte" and wrote that the city was attacking the "poumons de la ville" rather than what was choking them.

Earlier public positions

As a senator for the Union for a Popular Movement, Béchu voted on 9 April 2013 against article 1 of the bill opening marriage to same-sex couples. The Senate adopted it by 179 votes to 157. In April 2023 he said on France 2, "Si c'était à refaire aujourd'hui, je voterais oui." Le Parisien noted that, on joining the Borne government, he had already said he had "évolué".

In July 2019, after Béchu joked at Angers Loire Métropole about Gilles Bourdouleix walking out of a session in Cholet over the arrival of Travellers, Bourdouleix told a Cholet council that his neighbour was a contender for the "concours Lépine de la bêtise", a "grand spécialiste de la girouette" and "un danger public pour les finances".

Return to the mayoralty

Resumption of office in 2024

Christophe Béchu was not included when Michel Barnier formed a government in September 2024. The outgoing minister for ecological transition, a figure in Horizons, had said he wanted to return to the mayoralty of Angers, in Maine-et-Loire. In July 2022, after joining the government, he had handed the office to his first deputy, Jean-Marc Verchère, while remaining a councillor and taking Verchère’s place as first deputy; an extraordinary council was to confirm that swap. On 16 September 2024 Verchère announced his own resignation, writing that he had continued the team’s policy and was leaving confident the city would go on under Béchu. The election of a mayor was fixed for the following Monday.

The extraordinary council of 23 September 2024 elected Béchu mayor. The city’s record of the sitting states that he received 49 votes; La Tribune reported those 49 votes in his favour and 10 blank ballots from the opposition. The same meeting elected the list “Angers pour vous” to the deputy posts, again with 49 votes. Christelle Lardeux-Coiffard, until then deputy for active solidarity and women’s rights, became first deputy; Florian Rapin and Simon Gigan became deputies for buildings and associative life. Verchère did not return as first deputy and remained a councillor until the end of the year. The opposition challenged the returning mayor’s record at the session. Agnès Pannier-Runacher took the ecological-transition portfolio in the Barnier government.

On 7 October 2024 the council of Angers Loire Métropole returned him as its president. Ouest-France reported his statement that “the course is the one set in 2020.”

The 2026 municipal election

Le Monde reported on 21 November 2025 that Béchu was standing for a third consecutive term. His list, “Angers pour Vous,” carried the Interior Ministry’s divers-centre label. Coverage of the slate presented it as a Horizons-led gathering of the centre and centre-right, with Renaissance, the Democratic Movement (MoDem) and The Republicans. The main challenger was the ecologist Romain Laveau, heading “Demain Angers,” registered as a union of the left. Separate lists were led by Arash Saeidi for La France Insoumise and Aurore Lahondès for the National Rally.

On 15 March 2026, with seven lists and a turnout of 53.49 percent of 93,106 registered voters, “Angers pour Vous” took 24,281 votes, 49.48 percent of valid ballots, short of an absolute majority. “Demain Angers” qualified second with 14,088 votes (28.71 percent). Saeidi’s list received 8.20 percent, Lahondès’s 7.92 percent, and Valentin Rambault’s miscellaneous list “Angers 2026” 3.94 percent; two far-left lists, Lutte ouvrière and the NPA, remained under 1 percent each.

In the runoff on 22 March, turnout fell to 49.90 percent of 93,100 registered voters. Béchu’s list won 26,624 votes, 59.03 percent, against 18,478 (40.97 percent) for Laveau, taking 47 of the 59 council seats to 12 and 33 of the 42 seats on the community council to 9. Blank and null ballots were 754 and 598. The new councillors were then to elect the mayor from among themselves; with that majority, Béchu was returned for the term. Ouest-France later reported that he had again been elected president of Angers Loire Métropole, with fifteen vice-presidents installed.

He remained secretary-general of Horizons, the party of Édouard Philippe, while back at the hôtel de ville. In September 2026 Ouest-France reported that he would take interim charge of the party after Philippe left its executive leadership.