Jean-Paul Huchon

Jean-Paul Huchon was born on 29 July 1946 in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. His father was a primary school teacher at the school in the rue Patay, and his grandfather was close to the Catholic social reformer Marc Sangnier. He attended the Lycée Rodin in Paris before entering the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), from which he graduated in 1967 in the public service section. He then entered the École nationale d'administration, graduating in 1971 in the promotion Thomas More alongside future figures such as Jean-Claude Trichet, Jean-Louis Bianco, Alain Richard and Claude Guéant. From his youth he kept a lasting passion for rock music.

Huchon began as a civil administrator in the Budget Directorate of the Ministry of Finance in 1971, moved to the international relations directorate of the Ministry of Labour in 1975, and returned to the Budget Directorate from 1978 to 1981 as head of the agriculture and European Communities office.

A member of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and then of the Socialist Party from 1970, he became one of Michel Rocard's closest associates. He served as Rocard's chief of staff at the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Agriculture from 1981 to 1985, was appointed director general of the Caisse nationale du Crédit agricole in 1985, and returned to Rocard's side as chief of staff when Rocard became Prime Minister in 1988, remaining at Matignon until 1991. He drew on that experience in his book Jours tranquilles à Matignon (1993). He then worked as a close associate of the businessman François Pinault and later as vice president of a recruitment firm.

In Conflans-Sainte-Honorine he was deputy mayor under Rocard from 1977 and succeeded him as mayor in 1994, serving until 2001, when rules limiting multiple executive offices led him to step down. He was defeated in the 1997 legislative election in the Yvelines.

In 1998 he was elected president of the Regional Council of Île-de-France. He was re-elected in 2004, defeating the list of Jean-François Copé and André Santini, and in 2010, defeating Valérie Pécresse with a united left. His presidency saw large regional investment in public transport, including new tram lines, and a long dispute with the national government over the regional master plan and the Grand Paris project. He was vice president of the Paris 2012 Olympic bid committee and, from 2006 to 2015, president of Metropolis, the world association of major metropolises. In 2007 he was convicted of prise illégale d'intérêts in a case involving regional contracts with communications firms that employed his wife, Dominique Le Texier; on appeal in 2008 he received a six month suspended sentence and a 60,000 euro fine. In 2011 the Conseil d'État ordered him to repay 1.6 million euros over his campaign accounts without annulling his election. He was later convicted again of prise illégale d'intérêts over a 60,000 euro regional grant to the association Green Lotus.

His hopes of a fourth term in 2015 gave way to Claude Bartolone, who led the Socialist list and lost to Pécresse. Huchon then taught institutions and public governance as an adjunct professor at HEC Paris from 2016, sat on the supervisory board of SNCF, endorsed Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and became honorary president of the regional council in 2018.

Huchon's first marriage, to the civil administrator Odile Vadot, produced a son, the journalist Thomas Huchon, born in 1981. He later married Dominique Le Texier. He was the father of two sons. Colleagues and the press described him as a jovial bon vivant who loved good wine, cinema and rock and roll, from Led Zeppelin to Coldplay. He was an officer of the Legion of Honour and a knight of the Ordre national du Mérite and the Mérite agricole, and the author of several books on politics and Europe.

Jean-Paul Huchon died in the night of Thursday 22 to Friday 23 October 2026, aged 80, of cancer, according to one of his sons, who informed AFP. His son Thomas Huchon also marked his death on social media. The place of death was not reported in the first accounts.

Tributes came from across the political spectrum. Valérie Pécresse, his successor as president of the Île-de-France region and his former opponent, expressed great sadness, saying she had lost a former political adversary who had become her friend, and that with his departure a page of regional history had turned, one they had written together, sometimes face to face and often side by side. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Huchon led the Île-de-France region for seventeen years, longer than any other president of the regional council, and helped turn the region into a major actor in public transport and planning for the Paris metropolitan area. He represented the reformist, Rocardian wing of French socialism, and his later willingness to support Emmanuel Macron and Valérie Pécresse reflected his pragmatic style. His record is also marked by the convictions for prise illégale d'intérêts that followed him during and after his presidency.