A new French government was announced on Monday, comprised of 41 ministers, ten of them junior ministers, replacing the smaller interim government formed following Emmanuel Macron’s re-election as president in April.
The future composition of centre-right Macron’s ministerial line-up was the subject of wide speculation following his party’s losses in legislative elections in June, which cost it its absolute majority in Parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly.
While it and its allies remain the largest single parliamentary group, the elections saw major gains by the leftwing alliance NUPES and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, and the survival of the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, now the fourth-largest group.
The balance of parties that make up the new legislature means that Macron faces stormy times ahead in attempting to push his reforms through Parliament, and there was much debate among the president’s camp over the choices for the future government that would be tasked with doing so. Some had urged an emphasis on career politicians for ministerial appointments, to remove the technocratic character of the interim government, as symbolised by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. Others called for a widening of its political representation, and some for a clarification of its policy lines.
However, after 15 days of discussions led by Macron and Borne, all of those ideas were left by the wayside when the new government was announced by the Élysée Palace late Monday morning. Despite her position having been significantly weakened by the poor showing of Macron’s party in the legislative elections, Élisabeth Borne remains as head of government, one that is largely similar in style to the last.
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The high-profile ministers of Borne’s last government remain in place. Bruno Le Maire is re-appointed as economy and finance minister, the most senior ministerial post, while Éric Dupond-Moretti carries on as justice minister, Sébastien Lecornu as armed forces minister, Olivier Dussopt as labour minister and Pap Ndiaye as education minister. Also re-appointed is interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who sees his responsibilities widened to include France’s overseas territories – despite his disastrous handling of the Champions League cup final in Paris in May. Finally, Catherine Colonna remains as foreign minister despite the recent revelations of accusations of bullying behaviour made against her by diplomatic staff.
After the legislative election results, Macron announced that he had decided “to take charge of the will for change that the country has clearly expressed”, and spoke of his party’s need to “widen” its base of support. Fuelling speculation of attempts to form a coalition government, Macron met with leaders of the political parties elected to the National Assembly, and last week he tasked Borne with meeting the heads of the parliamentary groups, with the aim of forming what she herself called “a government of action”.
Yet after two weeks of those discussions, cleverly staged by the executive, the new government is one of “plus ça change…” – or more of the same. Having failed to convince opposition parties to support the so-called “government of action”, the president attempted to convince individual political figures to engage in what he has previously and obsessionally promoted as “rising above” the political fray. The result speaks for itself: not one of the 18 new faces in the government announced on Monday comes from outside of Macron’s camp.
This situation of status quo raises the question of whether it is the result of a form of denial, a swaggering confidence by the president that he still masters the political scene, or a fit of pique over the refusals he received to his offers of collaboration, or both. Whatever the case, the institutional impasse in which Macron has found himself since the legislative elections continues.
An indication of the depleted reserves of potential ministerial candidates among the Macron camp is the fact that three of his former ministers who were left out of Borne’s first government, formed a month and a half ago, have now been re-appointed.
Marlène Schiappa, who served in government from 2017 until May this year, has been given the post of junior minister for the social economy and associative activity. Sarah El Haïry, who served two years until May as junior minister for youth and “universal national service”, has been re-appointed to the role, working under the ministers of education and the armed forces, a rather incoherent double hierarchy that is very ‘Macronist’ in character. Meanwhile, Geneviève Darrieussecq, who until May was junior minister for armed forces veterans, has been given the post of junior minister for the disabled.
El Haïry and Darrieussecq are both from Macron’s centre-right ally, the MoDem party, which now has four ministerial posts, up from a previous two, with the re-appointment of agriculture minister Marc Fesneau, and the arrival of Jean-Noël Barrot as junior minister for digital transition and telecommunications.
The new environment minister is Christophe Béchu, who is close to former LR party member Édouard Philippe, who jumped ship to become Macron’s very first prime minister, from 2017 to 2020, and who, allied to Macron, has launched his own centre-right party, Horizons.
Béchu, replacing Amélie de Montchalin who exits government after her defeat in the legislative elections, sees the rank of his ministry tumble in the government hierarchy from fifth place to tenth, despite the supposed priority given to environmental affairs during the recent electoral campaigns. His junior minister, Bérangère Couillard, another ally of Édouard Philippe, is ranked in 40th position out of the total of 41 members of government. Meanwhile, neither Béchu nor Couillard have a notable track record in environmental affairs.
The previous post of minister for France’s overseas territories – where Macron and his party, particularly in the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, largely performed poorly in both the presidential and legislative elections – has been relegated to the status of junior minister, working under interior minister Gérald Darmanin. The newly appointed junior minister is Jean-François Carenco, a senior civil servant and a former prefect of Guadeloupe and the north-west Atlantic Ocean islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon (as well as six other postings as prefect in France).
The new junior minister for citizenship is Sonia Backès, a notably rightwing conservative politician whose career in New Caledonia has seen her serve in several senior posts in the archipelago’s local government.
Meanwhile, former health minister Olivier Véran, who served through the height of the Covid-19 crisis from 2020 to 2022, and who since May was briefly junior minister for relations with parliament, has been made government spokesman. He is replaced by Franck Riester, a member of the breakaway conservative LR party movement Agir, and who was previously Macron’s culture minister and latterly junior minister for foreign trade. Reister’s appointment is regarded as an attempt to further attract the support of those conservatives who are, as they have been dubbed, “Macron-compatible”, but is surprising given that his reputation within the LR, which he left in 2017, is hardly excellent.
The new health minister is François Braun, a hospital emergency service (ER) doctor who is also president of the union representing emergency services staff, the Samu-Urgences de France. He was commissioned by Macron last month to lead a so-called “flash mission” to advise on urgent measures to deal with the French public hospital services’ acute crisis of staffing and patient capacity, notably concerning Accident and Emergency departments. His report was delivered on June 30th, with 41 recommended measures, which Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has said would be enacted in their entirety.
It will now be for him to implement them. Braun replaces Brigitte Bourguignon, briefly health minister in the interim government who, like her colleagues Amélie de Montchalin and maritime affairs junior minister Justine Bénin, in a rule established by Macron, has had to step down from government after her defeat in the legislative elections.
As has previously been the case since Emmanuel Macron arrived in power in 2017, several figures from what is termed “civil society” have joined government. Besides François Braun and Jean-François Carenco, they also include Jean-Christophe Combe, the former director-general of the French Red Cross. A former chief of staff to conservative politicians, he was on Monday appointed as minister for solidarity, autonomy and the disabled.
He notably replaces Damien Abad, formerly the leader of the conservative LR party’s parliamentary group, who is accused by four women of, variously, rape and attempted rape , which he has firmly denied. One of three women whose accusations were revealed by Mediapart filed a formal complaint against Abad on June 27th, which has led to the launching of a preliminary investigation by the public prosecution services into “attempted rape”.
On leaving government, Abad, who has described the accusations against him as “foul calumnies”, declared he had held a “lengthy” discussion with Macron on Sunday, and “warmly” thanked the president for his “confidence” in him. He did not mention Élisabeth Borne, who had been strongly arguing behind closed doors for his departure from her government.
However, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, a gynaecologist who was appointed in the interim government as junior minister for relations with the French-speaking world, development, and international partnerships, remains at her post despite complaints filed against her by three former patients, two for “rape” and one for “violence”. Zacharopoulou has described the accusations as “unacceptable and revolting”.
Interior minister Gérald Darmanin, whose ministerial responsibilities were increased on Monday, has previously been the subject of a complaint for rape. Following a judicial investigation into the complaint, the public prosecution services in January advised that the case be dismissed.
In the context of Macron’s avowed intention to make equality between men and women a “major cause” of his second term in office, these examples appear as negative signals, and are eminently political. Furthermore, out of the 15 highest-ranking ministers in the new government, just two are women, while out of the ten junior ministers, representing the lowest ranks of government, nine are women.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
This abridged English version by Graham Tearse