In an announcement postponed from Tuesday, it was at a promised 3pm precisely on Wednesday when Alexis Kohler, secretary-general of the French presidential office, descended into the Elysée Palace courtyard to announce before the press the composition of President Emmanuel Macron’s first government, with which his fledgling maverick centrist movement will fight parliamentary elections in June.
It was a much-awaited moment that would reveal to what extent he had succeeded, since his appointment earlier in the week of the conservative Édouard Philippe as prime minister, in forming a promised ministerial panel “of the Left and Right”.
These are novel times in French politics, beginning with the election of a political newcomer as France’s youngest-ever head of state. But he must now seek a parliamentary majority from an electorate previously divided between traditional leftwing and rightwing parties, a significant section of which he must now convince to choose the political unknown. The success of that task hinges largely on the makeup of his government.
In 2002, 2007 and 2012, ever since the presidential term of office was reduced from seven to five years in parallel to the maximum length of the term of parliament, the legislative elections that dovetail the presidential poll have always handed a parliamentary majority to the party of the newly-elected president. But Macron’s party, La République En Marche, was established only this month out of the structure of the En Marche! movement created to drive his election campaign.
Speaking during a live-streamed, two-hour interview with Mediapart on May 5th, two days before his election, Macron promised that if elected, “I will choose women and men who have political experience but also credibility in the domain chosen”. He said those who came from civil society would have “legitimacy” to lead the ministries they are appointed to, working in government alongside “experienced figures”.
Derided by many on the Right as representing a continuation of the policies of socialist president François Hollande, and by the Left as a free-marketeer bent on dismantling social protection legislation, the challenge for Macron was to form a government that sufficiently appeals to, and reassures, a large chunk of the electorate from both sides.
Parliamentary candidates from his République En Marche party, joined by a smaller number from the centre-right MoDem party, will stand in a total of 511 constituencies - out of 577 - in the two-round elections on June 11th and 18th.
Of the list of 18 ministers and four state secretaries (junior ministers), equally divided between men and women, what is arguably Macron’s prize catch was the appointment of Nicolas Hulot, a veteran and largely popular figure among the Greens (who became a household name from his earlier years as a TV documentary maker and presenter), as minister of state responsible for the environment and energy transition, becoming third in the pecking order of Macron’s new government.
Of the list of 18 ministers and four state secretaries (junior ministers), equally divided between men and women, what is arguably Macron’s prize catch was the appointment of Nicolas Hulot, 62, a veteran and largely popular figure among the Greens, and a household name from his earlier years as a TV nature programme maker and presenter, as minister of state responsible for the environment and energy transition, becoming third in the pecking order of Macron’s new government.
Both before and since his election, a number of figures from the rightwing of the Socialist Party and moderates among the conservative Les Républicains party, declared their readiness to jump ship, and four in Macron’s new government have previously served as ministers. These include François Bayrou, 66, leader of the centre-right MoDem party – and, importantly, close to veteran Gaullist Alain Juppé, figurehead of a moderate centre-right current within Les Républicains (LR) - who boosted Macron’s election campaign after joining it in February, was made justice minister. Bruno Le Maire, 48, defeated in the LR primary elections, a former agriculture minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, was made economy minister.
The two others are socialists who served in François Hollande’s government, beginning with Jean-Yves Le Drian, 69, defence minister throughout Hollande’s 2012-2017 term, who has been made foreign minister. Annick Girardin, who was minister responsible for public sector organization and employees under Hollande, has been appointed as minister for France’s overseas territories.
The new defence minister is Sylvie Goulard, 52, an MEP with Bayrou’s MoDem party.
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Mayor of France’s second-largest city, Lyon, 69-year-old Gérard Collomb, a veteran socialist figure like Le Drian, was made interior minister. While Collomb has never served as minister, he is one of the old political guard in Macron’s government, first elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1981, a holder of multiple elected offices, from senator to head of the Greater Lyon Region’s council. Similarly, Bayrou, who has previously run for presidential office on three occasions, took up his first elected office, as a regional councillor, in 1982, while Le Drian began his political career as mayor of Lorient in 1981.
Lesser-known but novel choices included the nomination as culture minister of Françoise Nyssen, 65, co-director of the successful Actes Sud publishing house created by her father, and also the appointment of Laura Flessel, 45, a former Olympic épée fencer and France’s leading Olympic medallist, as sports minister.
One in two of the new ministers have never held elected office, but these included figures with prominent positions in “civil society”. Jean-Michel Blanquer, former head of the top-flight Paris business school ESSEC (where enrollment fees reach 13,500 euros per year), was appointed as education minister. Muriel Pénicaud, a former Human Ressources director with food giant Danone and defence firm Dassault, was made labour minister, one of the hottest government seats in charge of ensuring Macron’s promised reforms to deregulate the labour market. Élisabeth Borne, former boss of the Paris region’s transport sysytem, the RATP, a prefect and former advisor to several ministries under the previous socialist government, is the new transport minister.
New ministerial titles have been created, with curious semantics apparently designed as a camouflage of the most sensitive issues; Hulot, who is essentially environment and energy minister is officially at the head of a ministry for “ecological and cohesive transition”, while the former Ministry for European Affairs has become the “Europe Ministry”. There is a newly-created “Ministry for Territorial Cohesion”, and another for “Action and public Accounts”, whose brief includes state reform, the public services sector, and the budget, which was handed to Gérald Darmanin, a 34-year-old whose political career until now has been the conservative Républicains party.
Along with this, several former ministerial titles have disappeared. Gone are the ministries of “finance”, “family affairs”, “social affairs”, “urban affairs”, “housing”, “youth” and “the public sector”.
One striking aspect of the new government is its limited cross-party makeup, which is comprised, beyond those supporters of Macron’s République En Marche party, of a handful of the centre-left, centre-right and conservatives, and the fears of the conservative Républicains party of a mass desertion to join Macron has not transpired. Just two ministers are from the LR party (from which they are now excluded) despite the recruitment of Édouard Philippe, from the moderate Juppé-supporting ranks of the LR, as prime minister.
Another is the small number of ministers from ethnic minority backgrounds, made up of sports minister Laura Flessel and digital affairs minister Mounir Mahjoubi. Meanwhile, if the government contains a perfect parity between men and women, of the four most powerful ministries, three are led by men (Collomb, Hulot and Bayrou).
Importantly, economic policy is to be managed by the government’s rightwing, under Bruno Le Maire and Gérald Darmanin. During the LR party’s primaries last November to choose its candidate for the presidential elections, Le Maire (who garnered just 2% of votes cast), presented a markedly liberal economic programme.
Some have defended the composition of the new government as being but the first step in a promised wider political restructuring. “There will be a ‘blast’ effect,” claimed the new government spokesman, Christophe Castaner, a former socialist MP. But for the moment, it above all resembles an effort to destabilize the LR party, but with just one month to go before the parliamentary elections, its success is uncertain.
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The new French government in full:
PRIME MINISTER: Édouard Philippe
Until his nomination on May 15th as Emmanuel Macron’s first prime minister, Philippe, 46, was a Member of Parliament (MP) with the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, and mayor of the Channel port town of Le Havre, his hometown, where he has occupied a number of roles on municipal and regional councils. Like Macron, he is a graduate of the elite administration school ENA. After joining the Socialist Party when he was a student, he chose a political career with the conservatives, beginning at Le Havre town hall in 2001 when he was appointed deputy-mayor in charge of legal affairs. He was spokesman for former French prime minister Alain Juppé during the latter’s bid last November to become the LR party’s presidential election candidate.
Minsiters, in order of rank and with short profiles of the leading six:
INTERIOR MINISTER: Gérard Collomb
The mayor of Lyon, France’s second-largest city, Collomb, who turns 70 in June, is a Socialist Party veteran who has never before been minister. He has held multiple elected offices in the Lyon area since becoming an MP in 1981.
ECOLOGICAL TRANSITION MINISTER (equivalent to minister for environment and energy): Nicolas Hulot
A popular figurehead of the French ecologist movement, Hulot, 62, is nevertheless a maverick Green who has worked on special missions on environmental issues for governments of both the Left and Right, while his foundation dedicated to environmental causes is sponsored by large private firms. He first became known to the wide public for his wildlife documentaries which ran from 1987-1995.
JUSTICE MINISTER: François Bayrou
Another of the political veterans in the new government, Bayrou, 65, is leader of the MoDem centre-right party and mayor of the south-west town of Pau. A devout Catholic and father of six, he is close to moderate conservative former prime minister Alain Juppé, under whose government he served as education minister, but unpopular with many conservative voters after he backed socialist candidate Ségolène Royal against Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential elections. A political survivor, for a while eclipsed from the political frontrow, he leant Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign crucial support (and revived his own career on the national stage) by allying his movement to Macron’s bid in February.
ARMED FORCES MINISTER (equivalent to defence minister): Sylvie Goulard
A graduate of France’s elite administration school, ENA, Goulard, 52, was an MEP for Bayrou’s MoDem party from 2009-2017. She spent ten years with the French foreign affairs ministry, notably part of the team involved in negotiating the reunification of Germany, and is recognised as an expert on European affairs, about which she has written several books. Between 2001-2004 she served as an advisor to former European Commission president Romano Prodi.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND EUROPE MINISTER: Jean-Yves Le Drian
Le Drian, who like Gérard Collomb is a veteran Socialist Party figure and who also turns 70 in June, was defence minister throughout the presidency of socialist president François Hollande, with whom he is close. A longstanding and popular local politician in the Brittany region, whose regional council he presides, Le Drian leant his public support for Macron’s presidential election campaign, betraying the Socialist Party candidate and leftwinger Benoît Hamon.
Under Le Drian, European affairs will be looked after by Marielle de Sarnez, junior minister for Europe, vice-president of Bayrou’s MoDem party, an MEP since 1999 and Paris council member.
ECONOMY, FINANCE AND INDUSTRY MINISTER: Bruno Le Maire
The 48-year-old was until Macron’s election a prominent member of the conservative party Les Républicains (LR), who was soundly defeated in its primary elections last November to nominate a presidential candidate. In 2014, he came second in elections for the leadership of LR, defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy under who he served as European affairs minister and subsequently agriculture minister. He is fluent in German and a firm supporter of the Franco-German alliance within the EU.
Another former conservative, Gerald Darmanin, 34, has been appointed as junior minister under Le Maire in charge of finance (formal title, “public action and accounts”).
MINISTER OF TERRITORIAL COHESION: Richard Ferrand
MINISTER FOR HEALTH: Agnès Buzyn
CULTURE MINISTER: Françoise Nyssen
LABOUR MINISTER: Muriel Pénicaud
NATIONAL EDUCATION MINISTER: Jean-Michel Blanquer
AGRICULTURE AND FOOD MINISTER: Jacques Mézard
MINISTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION, RESEARCH AND INNOVATION: Frédérique Vidal FREDERIQUE
MINISTER FOR OVERSEAS TERRITORIES: Annick Girardin
MINISTER OF SPORTS: Laura Flessel-Colovic
TRANSPORT MINISTER: Elisabeth Borne
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GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN: Christophe Castaner
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- This article is an abridged version of a report in French which can be found here.
English version, with additional reporting, by Graham Tearse