Macron’s eminence grise, Jean Pisani-Ferry: son of a Maltese immigrant to France

Today Politico carries a profile of Jean Pisani-Ferry, the distinguished economist who is behind French presidential frontrunner Emmanuel Macron’s policies.

His surname caught my attention. He’s bound to be the son of a Maltese immigrant to France from Tunis, Algiers or Alexandria, I thought. So after I finished Politico’s piece, I read some more about him on the internet.

Pisani- Ferry’s father, Edgard Pisani, was indeed a Maltese immigrant from Tunis, who went to France when he was 18. He went on to become Charles de Gaulle’s agriculture minister and in the 1980s, France’s European Commissioner.