Nathalie Loiseau

Nathalie Lydie Jeanne Loiseau (; born 1 June 1964) is a French politician, diplomat and academic administrator who has served as a Member of European Parliament since 2019. Previously she was director of the École nationale d'administration (ENA) from 2012 to 2017 and served as the French Minister for European Affairs from 21 June 2017 to 27 March 2019. She was the top candidate of the La République En Marche electoral list in the 2019 European elections.

Early life Nathalie Loiseau was born on 1 June 1964 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Her father was a corporate consultant in mergers and acquisitions. She also studied Chinese language at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales.

Career in diplomacy

Loiseau joined the French foreign service in 1986.

Loiseau has been a Member of the European Parliament since the 2019 European elections. She has since been a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and its Subcommittee on Security and Defence, the latter of which she chaired from 2019 to 2024. In 2020, she also joined the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union.

In addition to her committee assignments, Loiseau is part of the Parliament's delegations for relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union; to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean; and for relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. She is also a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Children’s Rights the European Parliament Intergroup on LGBT Rights and the MEPs Against Cancer group. Since 2021, she has been chairing the Parliament's delegation to the EU-UK Parliamentary Assembly, which provides parliamentary oversight over the implementation of the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Loiseau was re-elected as an MEP following the 2024 European Parliament election. She was selected by the European Union as the chief of mission of its observation team to monitor the February 2025 Kosovan parliamentary election.

Political positions In a 2022 letter to European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius, Loiseau – together with Pierre Karleskind and Stéphanie Yon-Courtin – urged the EU to take measures to end British water treatment facilities’ discharges of raw sewage into shared waters, part of what they argued was an unacceptable lowering of environmental standards since Brexit.

Also in 2022, Loiseau and Bart Groothuis wrote a letter to local officials in Strasbourg, criticizing a deal between Chinese technology company Nuctech and Strasbourg Airport to provide airport scanning systems, arguing the firm would get access to data on its travelers, including EU lawmakers.

Recognition In March 2024, Loiseau was one of twenty MEPs to be given a "Rising Star" award at The Parliament Magazine'''s annual MEP Awards

Personal life Loiseau is married and has four children. The quote was reprinted by Le Journal du Dimanche'', and in response to the widespread international media coverage Loiseau clarified that she does not own a cat, and her comments were intended as a joke.

Works