It was not until the 1995 municipal elections that she fought her first electoral battle, becoming deputy, and heir-apparent, to Pierre Mauroy, mayor since 1973 of Lille.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne

In 1988, Pierre Mauroy, the city's mayor and a powerful figure in France's Socialist Party, engineered the routing of a new network of domestic and international high-speed train services through Lille and used that coup to turn the city into a logistics and service hub.

ECONOMIST: Urban regeneration