Jean Castex, the former Prime Minister, has been at the helm of the RATP for just one year. He is also still a municipal councilor of Prades, in the Pyrénées-Orientales. His current focus is on preparing for the transportation of spectators and athletes for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is a huge challenge, especially since there have been reports of the Parisian transportation agency being in crisis, lacking trains, new lines, and in deficit.
Jean Castex has always been an atypical Prime Minister. His unexpected role at Matignon saw him applying a governance that was particularly close to the ground and mixed with a certain roundness that was able to remedy many problems.
This “Castex method” was already tested in his unprecedented role as interministerial advisor for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. His responsibility for large sports events has earned him the nickname “Mr. Olympic Games.” Now, after his time as head of the government, he has returned to work closely on the Paris and global events, with the goal of managing up to 8.5 million people in Île-de-France every day of the summer competitions.
This enormous responsibility is one that Jean Castex hopes to tackle with the dialogue that has already started with the unions of the transportation agency in order to “spread out the vacations” for RATP employees.
He stated that for him, the worst thing would have been to be bored or simply a spectator of public action.
Jean Castex is confident that the life of a RATP CEO is “extremely busy” and “leaves no room for boredom or nostalgia” – in case anyone doubted this. He says he is almost as busy now as he was at Matignon, but is still committed to staying in action, even though he had left the keys to Elisabeth Borne, who was the president of RATP from 2015 to 2017. He also emphasized that there is no opportunity to return to politics.
He noted that his role is primarily focused on sports, especially high-level competitions, and his main goal is to ensure that obstacles and challenges are successfully overcome.
The RATP is the 3rd largest urban transport operator in the world, operating in 15 countries with 780 client cities. It employs 71,000 people and is responsible for public transport, entering into multi-year operating contracts with Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), which organizes and finances transportation for around 13 million people. The price of bus, metro, RER, and train tickets is also determined by IDFM, under the leadership of Valérie Pécresse.
