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POLITICS

Who’s who in the new French government

France has a new government after president Emmanuel Macron conducted a - limited - reshuffle of his ministers. Here's the complete list of the new government.

Published: 20 July 2023 16:45 CEST
Updated: 22 July 2023 13:48 CEST
Who's who in the new French government
The new cabinet will meet on Friday morning. Photo by Geoffroy Van der Hasselt/AFP

Many of the biggest names of the government are remaining in post after Macron opted for a fairly limited remaniement (reshuffle) on Thursday.

Despite widespread rumours that she would lose her job after the bitterly divisive pension reform, Elisabeth Borne remains in post as prime minister. Likewise finance minister Bruno Le Maire – Macron’s longest-serving minister who has been in the same role since 2017 – and interior minister Gérald Darmanin.

Although many of the newcomers are not well known names, many of them are Macron loyalists, with an emphasis on political experience rather than the appointment of outside experts to ministries.

The Council of Ministers – complete with newly appointed ministers – will meet on Friday morning, where Macron will address the new team. He then heads off to the Pacific for a series of diplomatic meetings, while the Assemblée nationale completes its final sessions before the summer break.

The month of August normally sees limited political activity in France as the country heads off on holiday, with la rentrée in September marking the presentation of a new programme of policies from the ruling party. 

Here are the new ministers;

Gabriel Attal – Education minister. Not a newcomer to government, the 34-year-old Attal has previously been government spokesman and public accounts minister. He replaced Pap Ndiaye – an outside appointment who previously worker as an academic and was best known for his work on race relations. 

Aurélien Rousseau – Health minister. A technocrat who previously ran the office for Elisabeth Borne, Rousseau was in charge of the Paris regional health authority during the pandemic. Unusually in a country where the health minister is often a doctor, he has no medical qualifications. He replaces François Braun, a civil servant who had previously run the ambulance service. 

Aurore Bergé – Solidarity minister. Considered a close ally of Macron and the leader of his party in the Assemblée nationale, Bergé becomes the junior minister at the health ministry, the number two to Aurélien Rousseau. She replaces Jean-Christophe Comb, the former head of the Red Cross in France, in the role.

Sabrina Agresti-Roubache – minister for urban affairs. A relative newcomer to parliament, she was elected MP for Bouches-du-Rhône (including Marseille) in 2022. Reputed to be close to Macron, she was formerly a producer who worked on the fabulously trashy Netflix series Marseille – a political drama centred around the (fictional) mayor of Marseille.

Bérangère Couillard – equalities minister. Moving from the environment ministry is MP for Gironde. She replaces Isabelle Rome.

Sarah El Haïry – Biodiversity Minister. Former youth minister Sarah El Haïry moves to the newly created role of biodiversity minister, part of the gradual expansion of the environment ministry. 

Philippe Vigier – minister for overseas territories. Vigier is an MP for the centrist party MoDem, the major allies of Macron’s party in parliament. He replaces Jean-François Carenco.

Patrice Vergriete – housing minister. Currently the mayor of Dunkirk, Vergriete has a background in urban planning and housing.

Thomas Cazenave – budget minister. The MP for the Gironde area (around Bordeaux) steps into the junior finance ministry role vacated by Gabriel Attal.

Fadila Khattabi – Minister for disabilities. Former president of the commission for social affairs, she replaces Geneviève Darrieussecq in the role.

Social economy minister. The previous holder of the post, Marlène Schiappa will leave the government after a series of controversies – the most serious being the ongoing investigation into the use of funds from a charitable organisation designed to combat extremism which she was responsible for running. She also made headlines when she appeared – clothed – in Playboy magazine. Her responsibilities will be divided between other junior ministers in the finance ministry.

The rest of the ministers remain in their previous positions. They are;

Prime Minister – Élisabeth Borne
Finance Minister – Bruno Le Maire
Interior Minister – Gérald Darmanin
Foreign Minister – Catherine Colonna
Government spokesperson – Olivier Véran 
Environment Minister – Christophe Béchu
Minister of Energy Transition – Agnès Pannier-Runacher
Agriculture Minister – Marc Fesneau
Justice Minister – Éric Dupond-Moretti
Defence Minister – Sébastien Lecornu
Labour Minister – Olivier Dussopt
Culture Minister – Rima Abdul Malak
Minister of higher education – Sylvie Retailleau
Minister of Public functions – Stanislas Guerini
Minister of sports and the Olympics/ Paralympics – Amélie Oudéa-Castéra

Junior ministers

Minister for relations with Parliament – Franck Reister
Minister for childhood- Charlotte Caubel
Minister of the seas – Hervé Berville
Minister of industry – Roland Lescure
Minister of digitalisation and telecommunications – Jean-Nöel Barrot
Minister of small businesses and tourism – Olivia Grégoire
Minister of territorial collectivities and rurality – Dominique Faure
Minister of citizenship – Sonia Backès
Minister of external commerce and France abroad – Olivier Becht
Europe Minister – Laurence Boone
Minister of development and the Francophone world/ international partners – Chrysoula Zacharopoulou
Minister of remembrance of former soldiers – Patricia Mirallès
Minister of youth education and training – Carole Grandjean
Minister of transport – Clément Beaune
Minister for healthcare workers – Agnès Firmin le Bodo 

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JOHN LICHFIELD

OPINION: When the mask slips, Le Pen’s party reveals its fundamental racism

The French far-right party's new leader is smooth, handsome and plausible - writes John Lichfield - but when the mask slips we see that the party's fundamental ideology remains deeply racist.

Published: 26 June 2024 12:12 CEST
OPINION: When the mask slips, Le Pen's party reveals its fundamental racism

The talented Monsieur Bardella wishes you well.

He wishes the poor well and he wishes the wealthy well. He wishes the old well and he wishes the young well. He wishes the Right well and he wishes the Left well.

His programme is partly populist Left, partly populist Right and now, bizarrely, includes several ideas copy-pasted from Macronism (formerly known as the blood-sucking elite).

Bardella is like a politician invented by AI: plausible to the point of being unctuous; all things to all people (except the brown or black ones); gently brutal-looking; programmed with information and disinformation that he can seamlessly access (unlike Marine Le Pen).

Is he possibly a robot?

Bardella’ performance in the first TV debate of this cursed election was impressive.

But the mask did slip a couple of times.

He accidentally admitted that the Rassemblement National’s alternative to the Macron pension reform – headline “retirement at 60 (for some)” –  would mean many some other people retiring at 66 or 67. Whoops.

Bardella’s face at that moment was like that of a 12-year-old caught cheating at cards. Maybe, he is not a robot after all.

The Prime ministerial candidate of the Far Right Rassemblement National also refused to give any credit to the contribution to French life made by immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants.

Not the footballers, not the nurses, not the doctors, not the cleaners, not the scientists. Not even his Italian grandparents nor his Algerian great grand-parent.

The PM Gabriel Attal tried to push him on this point; so did the Left wing representative Manuel Bompard (not a man I like but a spokesman who defended his camp well).

Bardella refused to say a good word in favour of brown or black French people. He refused to acknowledge the ideological – and fundamentally – racist basis for the RN’s plans to exclude “dual nationals” from some senior government jobs.

Explained: the far-right’s plan to ban dual-nationals from certain jobs 

In practise that will means marginalising Franco-Algerians or Franco-Moroccans, not Franco-Germans or Franco-Luxembourgers. There is no practical justification for this policy. It is a way of signalling that, if the RN came to power, the single, indivisible French Republic will end. There will be the white French people and there will be the rest.

Already, the prospect of the Far Right winning a majority in parliament over the next two weekends has produced a minor explosion of racist remarks in social media and on the street.   

Are all the 33-35 percent of French voters prepared to vote for Bardella and Le Pen racists? No, of course, they are not.

But race – and an exaggerated sense of threat to French identity – are an important part of this extraordinary mud-slide of support for the Far Right in the opinion polls.

READ ALSO: What is ‘national preference’ and how would it hurt foreigners in France?

There is also something else at work which is near-hysterical and difficult to combat. In the minds of many French voters, the Far Right has become the “antidote to Macronism”, the opposite to Emmanuel Macron and therefore “a good thing”.

It is as if many French people – including many who should know better including the editors of Le Figaro – have turned a blind eye to the history of Lepennism and much of its present.

Anything said to point out the residual racism of the RN and the anti-European charlatanry of its economic programme  reinforces, rather than weakens their choice. Bardella and Le Pen are the opposite of all that has gone before. Bring it on.

This is partly Emmanuel Macron’s fault. He promised to be a revolutionary and different kind of politician. He turned out to be another mainstream reformer. He made no effort to build a grassroots, political  movement. He is given no credit for his successes (lower unemployment, cleaner air). He has become hated beyond all logic or reason but that, itself, is a calamitous failure for a politician.

By sweeping away what remained of the failed centre-right in and centre-left in 2017 Macron created a new political duality of Centre v  Far Right. This served him well electorally through two presidential elections.

But the French are a people devoted to regular “alternance” ie detesting and frequently booting out their leaders. For many previously moderate voters, the only gut-satisfying alternative to the irrationally detested centre is now a cosmetically softened Far Right.

This is an absurd and unhealthy situation which will do France no good and could cause much permanent harm. Will the Far Right win a majority on July 7th?

The opinion polls suggest not. But they are drifting gradually in Bardella’s direction.

In June 2016, the UK took careful aim and shot itself in the foot. I fear that France may be about to shoot itself in the heart and the head.

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