Early life and career
Glucksmann was born in Boulogne-Billancourt. His mother was Françoise Glucksmann (née Villette), daughter of philosopher Jeannette Colombel. His father was the philosopher André Glucksmann, a strong advocate for human rights, particularly against the totalitarian regimes of Vietnam and the USSR. Glucksmann's paternal grandfather, Rubin Glucksmann, born in Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary (present-day Chernivtsi, Ukraine), had been a spy for the Soviet Union during the interwar period. He attended Sciences Po.
Between 2005 and 2012, Raphaël Glucksmann was an adviser to the President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. Zguladze was a special adviser to President Saakashvili from 2009 to 2012 and later served as First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine from 2014 to 2016.
Political career
Beginnings
In 2018, Glucksmann founded the centre-left political party Place Publique.
Member of the European Parliament, 2019–present
On 26 May 2019, Place Publique and the French Socialist Party presented a joint list at the European Parliament election, with Glucksmann as the head, under the slogan, "Envie d'Europe, écologique et sociale". The list obtained a total of 6.2%, thereby securing the election of six members to the European Parliament: Glucksmann, Sylvie Guillaume, Eric Andrieu, Aurore Lalucq, Pierre Larrouturou, Nora Mebarek.
In Parliament, Glucksmann has served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and its Subcommittee on Human Rights. Since 2020, he has also chaired the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union.
In addition to his committee assignments, Glucksmann is a member of the Responsible Business Conduct Working Group and the Spinelli Group.
In his parliamentary work, Glucksmann has focused attention on the Xinjiang internment camps, for which he has been sanctioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China in 2021. The sanctions were lifted by China in April 2025 following negotiations with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.
Glucksmann has led public campaigns to raise awareness and enact legislation to hold companies accountable for labour exploitation and forced labour in the fashion supply chain industry in China.
In March 2024, Glucksmann was one of 20 MEPs to be given a "Rising Star" award at The Parliament Magazine's annual MEP Awards.
2024 European elections
In the 2024 European elections, Glucksmann led the list "Réveiller l'Europe", an alliance of his own Place Publique party and the historical Socialist Party. That list obtained 13.83% of the national votes, a high score compared to the 6.19% obtained in 2019. This result made this list the third nation-wide (after those led by Bardella and Hayer), which confirmed the increasing prominence of Raphaël Glucksmann as a national political figure.
Political positions
In May 2021, Glucksmann joined a group of 39 mostly Green Party lawmakers from the European Parliament who in a letter urged the leaders of Germany, France and Italy not to support Arctic LNG 2, a $21 billion Russian Arctic liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, due to climate change concerns.
In November 2021, Glucksmann led a group of seven members of the European Parliament to Taiwan to send a strong signal in support of the self-ruling island, despite a threat of retaliation from China. During this visit, the delegation stated to President Tsai Ing-wen: "Europe is standing with you." Glucksmann has been a strong proponent for deepened cooperation with Taiwan.
From 2019, Glucksmann was a persistent leader in the social media campaign to portray China's treatment of Uyghurs as a genocide; as of 2021, nearly half of the posts on his official Instagram profile concerned that issue. In 2021, Glucksmann declared that China's treatment of the Uyghurs was "the worst crime against humanity of our time". That same year, he accused German companies of acting as "ambassadors of Chinese interest". In January 2022, his persistent agitation was cited by Macron as having influenced French parliament to pass its motion in 2022 to recognize China's treatment of the Uyghurs as a 'genocide'. That same year, he declared that France's decision to sent two athletes to the Beijing Olympic Winter Games was a "total shame".
In March 2024, he refused to use the term "genocide" in regards to the treatment of Palestinians by Israel during the Gaza war by claiming to be "extremely cautious about the term's usage". Glucksmann stated he would defer to the position of the International Criminal Court, which accuses Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide. He has nevertheless denounced the "carnage" in Gaza as well as the blockade. In April 2024, he said that Sciences Po Paris administration had the right to forcibly expel pro-Palestinian students from their premises during their occupation.
In March 2026, Glucksmann accused Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, of antisemitism for pronouncing his name as "Glucksman". In the aftermath, he declared that Melenchon was "the Jean-Marie Le Pen of our era".
Glucksmann describes himself as pro-Europe and pro-Ukraine. He supports state interventionism, industrial planning, limited immigration and 10-months obligatory civil service.
