Jean-Noël Barrot, on a mission to secure the Internet

It’s D-Day for Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister Delegate in charge of the Digital Transition and Telecommunications . This June 27, the bill on the regulation and security of the digital space, the first major text that he will defend, begins its examination in the Senate. He has been working on it with his team since his arrival in the government of Elisabeth Borne a year ago. Enough to propel the slender silhouette of this very young forty-year-old, with piercing blue eyes, to the front of the stage.

But this project, by its scope and the sensitive subjects it intends to deal with, is perilous. On the menu: the fight against cyberbullying, the protection of minors exposed to ographic sites or the response to online scams, in particular. To these issues that several cases have sadly illustrated, such as the suicide of Lindsay, victim of harment on social networks, Jean-Noël Barrot responds, he ures, with a salvo of “concrete measures”.

Risk of being banned for six months

Among the most emblematic: the six-month banishment from social networks, which a judge can pronounce against cybercriminals. And so that this sanction, above all dissuasive, does not remain a dead letter, the minister, himself the father of two children, is counting on the collaboration of the networks, invited “to implement all means to prevent the re-registration of heads of pack, thus depriving them of notoriety and a sounding board”.

Also on its agenda is the application, from the end of August, of the new European rules governing platforms via the famous Digital Services Act . “At VivaTech, Elon Musk told me that he was in favor of the spirit of European regulation: what is illegal offline must be illegal online. But will he be able to afford it? asks Jean-Noël Barrot.

Economy and general interest

Other construction sites occupy this Versailles man, husband of a midwife and whose sister, Hélène, is Uber’s European communications director. Like support for future French champions of artificial intelligence. And hasn’t he recently convinced 250 companies to commit to doubling their purchases from French Tech by 2027?

“Jean-Noël combines cutting-edge expertise as an economist and teacher with a keen sense of the general interest”, summarizes Alain Papie, chairman of BNP Paribas CIB and president of the French-American Foundation France, recalling that the minister part of the organisation’s very select Young Leaders programme.

Four years at MIT

Because before embarking on a political career, this HEC graduate, where he was a doctoral student in economics before teaching there, spent more than four years at the Machusetts Institute of Technology. On the MIT campus, his research covers corporate finance and innovation. But this lover of baroque music, violinist in his spare time, also teaches the financing of start-ups there.

When he left Boston, he took with him the concern to use the resources of university research to design public policies. But also, when new devices are deployed, the desire to ess their real effects.

The torch of his father

The fact remains that in 2017, three years after the death of his father, the son of Jacques Barrot, former minister and vice-president of the European Commission, is overtaken by the desire to take up the torch. Emmanuel Macron’s campaign is timely. Claiming to belong to the Christian Democrat current, like his father, and after an experience as a departmental councilor in the Haute-Loire, this close friend of Francois Bayrou is elected deputy of Yvelines under the label MoDem. A first mandate which brings him to the vice-presidency of the finance commission of the National embly.

His re-election in 2022 then opens the doors of government to him to succeed Cédric O in the digital economy. A year later, while a ministerial reshuffle is taking shape, this discreet man remains, he says, “fully mobilized” to carry his bill… to the end.