Arnaud Danjean

Arnaud Danjean (born 11 February 1971 in Louhans, Saône-et-Loire) is a French politician and a Member of the European Parliament, elected in the 2009 European election for the East constituency. He was elected a member of the Burgundy Regional Council on 21 March 2010.
He chairs the European Parliament Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE), which is a sub-committee of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET).
He is member of the French right / center right party Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and of the European People's Party.

Arnaud Danjean graduated in 1992 from Sciences Po with a Degree in "Communication, Research and Human Resource", and completed his curriculum in 1993 with a Postgraduate Diploma in Political Science and International Relations at Sciences Po.

At the Ministry of Defence

After completing his military service as a Reserve Officer at the submarine base of Toulon, he passed an examination to join the French DGSE as a civil servant. He carried out numerous missions in Sarajevo in 1995 and 1996, especially during the Siege of Sarajevo and the signature of the Dayton Agreement. He became a permanent member of the French Embassy in Sarajevo from June 1996 to September 1998.

He then worked as a Balkans' specialist for the Ministry of Defence and took part to the negotiations of the Rambouillet Agreement in February and March 1999.

After June 1999, he carried out short-term missions in the Balkans and Central European Countries.

He was awarded the Ordre national du Mérite at only 29 in May 2000.

At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

He joined the Mission of France to the United Nations in Geneva in 2002, and performed in 2004 a new mission in Kosovo for Javier Solana, High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

In 2005, he entered the office of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Michel Barnier where he was in charge of the Balkans and Afghanistan. He remained in office from July 2005 to March 2007 unter the tenure of Philippe Douste-Blazy.

Early beginnings

Danjean stood for election at the French legislative election, 2007 in Bresse (Saône-et-Loire) against the incumbent Arnaud Montebourg. He was defeated by less than 400 votes after leading the first round with 44% of the polls against 41,3% for Montebourg.

He spent an extended stay in the United States at the end of 2007 in the framework of a German Marshall Fund course.

Member of the European Parliament, 2009–present

Elected a Member of the European Parliament on 7 June 2009 for the East constituency on the list headed by Joseph Daul, Danjean was elected as chairman of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE), a sub-committee of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET).

In addition, Danjean serves as a member of the European Parliament's Sky and Space Intergroup (SSI). In 2010, he joined the Friends of the EEAS, a unofficial and independent pressure group formed because of concerns that the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton was not paying sufficient attention to the Parliament and was sharing too little information on the formation of the European External Action Service.

Danjean carried out several missions, in particular in Georgia and Uganda. He is the rapporteur for the European Parliament Resolution of 10 March 2010 on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy and the Common Security and Defence Policy.

Reelected on 25 January 2012, he is the rapporteur of a new EP Resolution on the implementation of the Common Security and Defence Policy, which is voted by the European Parliament on 22 November 2012 with 442 votes for, 92 against and 75 abstentions. During this second phase of his term, he visited Libya in February 2012, Georgia in September 2012, attended the United Nations General Assembly on 29 October to 2 November 2012, went to Mali and Niger in April 2013, and again in the United States for a series of conferences at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Hudson Institute, and a meeting with Mike Turner, U.S. Representative for Ohio's 10th congressional district and member of the United States House Committee on Armed Services.

Role in French national politics

Danjean was elected a Member of the Burgundy Regional Council on 21 March 2010. A candidate at the French legislative election, 2012 in Saône-et-Loire against Cécile Untermaier, who was supported by Arnaud Montebourg, he was defeated with only 49,6% of the votes.

Danjean is widely considered an Atlanticist and proponent of NATO.

He welcomed François Hollande's decision to engage the French Armed Forces in response to the armed groups' offensive in Northern Mali on 11 January 2013, an action he called "inevitable, justified and legitimate" according to the circumstances and international law. He however regretted the inertia of the European Union despite a vote on a strategy for Sahel as soon as 2011, and criticized the inability of the French Government to involve other European countries which he sees as a consequence of the precipitate withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.

In 2015, Danjean warned fellow French conservatives against being soft on Russia, arguing that “through the fascination for Putin, there is a real philosophical and ideological pull-back, namely a rejection of political liberalism.”

• European Council on Foreign Relations, Member

He commented in 2007 the Declaration of European Muslims of Mustafa Cerić, Rais of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He published in January 2013 an article in the Revue défense nationale : "Entre tentation du repli et fatalisme du déclin : l’Europe face à ses responsabilités" (Between the temptation of retreat and the fatalism of decline : Europe facing its responsibilities).

• Decorated Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Mérite in May 2000 (decoration awarded by the President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, and pinned in December 2000 by the Minister of Defence Alain Richard).