Laurent Saint-Martin (born 22 June 1985) is a French politician who has been serving as head of Business France since 2022.
Saint-Martin previously represented the 3rd constituency of the Val-de-Marne department in the National Assembly from 2017 to 2022. A member of La République En Marche! (LREM), he has served as a regional councillor of Île-de-France since 2021. Since January 2023, he has been Managing Director of Business France.
Political career
From 2009 until 2012, Saint-Martin was a member of the Socialist Party. However, he was not actively involved in politics before he joined La République En Marche! in 2016.
In the 2017 legislative election, Saint-Martin was elected to the National Assembly, where he represented the 3rd constituency of Val-de-Marne. He succeeded Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg of the Radical Party of the Left. In Parliament, Saint-Martin served as a member of the Finance Committee. In addition to his committee assignments, he was part of the French-Peruvian Parliamentary Friendship Group.
In late 2018, Saint-Martin was offered to join the government of Prime Minister Édouard Philippe but declined a post as Secretary of State at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance under the leadership of Bruno Le Maire. In June 2019, Philippe entrusted him with a mission to reform the national system for the identification, seizure and confiscation of criminal assets. From 2020, Saint-Martin served as the Parliament's lead rapporteur on the annual budget of France; he succeeded Joël Giraud.
Within his party, Saint-Martin became a member of the executive board in 2019. In that capacity, he was entrusted alongside Guillaume Chiche for the party's policy planning.
In early 2021, Saint-Martin emerged as the frontrunner in the race to lead the La République En Marche! campaign in Île-de-France during that year's regional elections and to potentially succeed Valérie Pécresse as President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France. With only 9.62 percent of the vote, he ultimately lost against Pécresse but was elected as a regional councillor.
In the 2022 legislative election, Saint-Martin ran for reelection to the National Assembly but lost his seat to Louis Boyard of La France Insoumise.
Life after politics
In 2022, Saint-Martin was appointed to head Business France.
Political positions
In 2018, Saint-Martin was one of Stanislas Guerini's first supporters when the latter ran for the post of LREM leader.