President Emmanuel Macron is spending Tuesday selecting his cabinet with new Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, reports Bloomberg.
Just back from meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Macron is huddling with Philippe throughout the day with the list of ministers due to be released at 3pm Wednesday in Paris.
Macron this month became the first French president to be elected without the support of either of the country’s major political parties after promising to overcome the ideological divisions that have long hampered policy making. As such, he has a delicate balancing act to pull off as he seeks a mix of men and women, political backgrounds, and technical experience.
“He always said his government will have gender parity with people from various political backgrounds and from civil society,” Richard Ferrand, Macron’s campaign chief, said on France Inter radio Tuesday. “Getting over divisions means everyone can have their own political background, but still work for the common good.”
Philippe, who was appointed Monday, is the mayor of the port city of Le Havre and also a member of parliament from the centre-right Republicans party. Macron was a minister in the government of socialist President François Hollande.
The announcement of the new government had been expected Tuesday evening, but a statement from Macron’s office said the announcement will come Wednesday and blamed the delay on the need to verify the candidates. The first cabinet meeting has been pushed back to Thursday from Wednesday.
French press reports suggest the only member of Hollande’s cabinet likely to keep his job is defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who backed Macron over the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate Benoît Hamon. Other names that have been mentioned as possible members of the cabinet are centrist politician François Bayrou, who pulled out of the presidential race to rally his support behind Macron, Lyon Mayor Gerard Collomb, European lawmaker Sylvie Goulard, former trade minister Anne-Marie Idrac, and Ferrand.
French newspapers have reported that Bayrou and Philippe both insisted on naming a certain number of ministers. Ferrand refused to be pinned down on exactly when the cabinet would be named. “We can’t tie our programme to the schedule of when newspapers go to press,” he said.
On Monday evening in Berlin, the president said he doesn’t want to pool existing euro-area government debt and pledged to implement economic reform in France as he sought to revive the French-German partnership during his first overseas trip on his first full day in office. He’ll meet Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni Wednesday evening in Paris.
How long that cabinet lasts, and whether it’s able to enact the economic modernization Macron promised in his campaign, will depend on parliamentary elections to be held June 11th and June 18th. Macron needs to be able to pull together a majority in parliament - either with his own party, La République En Marche (the Republic on the Move), or with partners. If he falls short, the new parliament could vote down Macron’s cabinet and choose its own government, sidelining the president.