Born on July 31, 1947, in Saint Sylvain Bellegarde, in Creuse, Hubert Védrine studied at Sciences Po Paris and then at ENA. Upon graduating in 1974, he joined the Ministry of Culture and then the Ministry of the Environment before moving to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1978, he was elected ...
Born on July 31, 1947, in Saint Sylvain Bellegarde, in Creuse, Hubert Védrine studied at Sciences Po Paris and then at the ENA. Upon graduating in 1974, he joined the Ministry of Culture and then the Ministry of the Environment before moving to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1978, he was elected Deputy for the Socialist Party in the first constituency of Nièvre. He joined the General Directorate for Cultural, Scientific and Technical Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1979.
Hubert Védrine became a diplomatic advisor and then joined the Council of State during the first cohabitation in the first term of François Mitterrand. In 1988, he served as spokesperson for the presidency and was appointed Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic in 1991, until François Mitterrand’s departure in May 1995.
That same year, Hubert Védrine entered the Council of State, where he had been appointed in 1986 as Master of Requests, and then joined the law firm Jeantet and Associates in 1996. At Fayard, he published an 800-page work on the foreign policy of the former President, titled: “The Worlds of François Mitterrand”.
Appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in May 1997, a position he held for five years until May 2002, he defined the concept and use of the term “hyperpower” to describe the United States during the Kosovo war in 1998-1999. He published with Dominique Moïsi in 2000, “The Maps of France in the Age of Globalization”.
Founder of Hubert Védrine Conseil in 2003, he presides over the François Mitterrand Institute.
A member of the board of directors of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) and the Steering Committee of the Aspen Institute France since 2006, he has a special partnership with the Gide Loyrette Nouel law firm.
Since 2004, he has been an independent director. In 2005, he was appointed a member of the High Council for the Alliance of Civilizations by the then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. He published a biography of François Mitterrand in the Découvertes collection, Gallimard: “Mitterrand, a Design, a Destiny”.
Hubert Védrine is the author of several works such as “Atlas of the Global World” with Pascal Boniface, “The Time of Chimeras”, a collection of articles, lectures, and prefaces, and “American Foreign Policy” published by the audio publisher De Vive Voix.