As Agnès Buzyn took her seat in the Radio J studio in Paris on March 23rd, Rachida Dati had a lot on her plate. It was French Language Week, the Printemps du Cinéma spring film festival was getting under way, and ambitious restoration plans had just been announced for the Louvre Museum. Yet the minister of culture, who rejoined the rightwing Les Républicains (LR) party in April, made time to listen to her former rival at the last Paris mayoral elections.
Six years after refusing to join forces with Dati between the two rounds of voting at those elections, Agnès Buzyn, Emmanuel Macron’s former health minister, made clear her stance regarding next year's mayoral race. “I will not support Madame Dati,” she announced, citing “legal matters” as an “stumbling block”. The former mayoral candidate for Macron's Renaissance party in 2020 said of allegations concerning Rachida Dati: “There’s a lot of money behind it, there are potential external interests with other countries. Until there's a verdict I would prefer Madame Dati to step back from public life.”
That was all it took for Agnès Buzyn to receive a lawyer's letter, as she later revealed to several close contacts. In the letter was the threat of defamation proceedings and a reference to her own run-in with the courts. The former Health Minister had been placed under the status of “assisted witness” in an inquiry by the Cour de Justice de la République (CJR) – the court that handles accusations against ministers over actions they took in office - as part of its investigation into the government’s handling of the Covid health crisis. That case has since been closed with no further proceedings against any minister.
This incident concerning the culture minister's legal letter may seem a trivial affairr, but it sheds light on the mindset of the woman gearing up for a second run at the top job in Paris. With nine months to go before the election, Rachida Dati, the current mayor of the capital's 7th arrondissement, is watching every twist and turn of the pre-campaign manoeuvring. “She handles hurdles in her own way,” said one of her supporters. That “way” is well known in the world of Paris politics, where the vast majority of those approached by Mediapart refused to speak on the matter.
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All agree on one thing: Rachida Dati is a figure who stands out in this often sanitised world. Described by her critics as a “fighter”, she inspires mixed feelings even among her own political family, ranging from deep respect for her grit to an equal fear of her outbursts. “If you cross swords with her there's no going back,” joked one source. “She’s got this ‘you’re either with me or against me’ approach, it’s how she does politics,” admitted one supporter.
The former justice minister under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy declined to speak to Mediapart - though she did get one of her allies, Paris LR councillor Nelly Garnier, to call us – nor did she respond to other media outlets asking about her mayoral hopes. “It’s not the right moment for her yet,” said a minister who knows her well. First she has to navigate a tricky start to the summer, one full of legal, political, and parliamentary hurdles.
Local and national politics collide
Parliamentary scrutiny of the public broadcasting reform bill, which was due to begin on Monday in the National Assembly but was blocked when MPs voted not to debate it, was the first major test for the minister of culture. This reform is her top ministerial priority, the first item on the task list handed to her by Emmanuel Macron when she joined the cabinet in January 2024. It is an “obsession”, noted Socialist MP Emmanuel Grégoire, who spoke in the chamber on Monday on behalf of his group.
His intervention added an overtly political tone to an already charged debate: Grégoire, the former deputy mayor of Paris under incumbent Anne Hidalgo, has himself been vying for the Socialist Party's nomination for the 2026 Paris municipal elections. And in fact, just hours after the debate, he was duly announced as the party's mayoral candidate after a vote by members on Monday evening. This collision of local and national agendas was always set to cause fireworks. In the committee stage of the broadcasting reform bill Emmanuel Grégoire had set the tone by decrying the minister’s “insulting lies” about public service broadcasting, while in Le Monde she accused the Socialists of “politically-driven misinformation”.
“At the Paris Council, she always responds by going on the attack ,” Grégoire told Mediapart, also citing her recent stormy interview on France 5 television's 'C à vous' programme with journalist Patrick Cohen. For the minister, passing this bill, which has already been delayed several times, goes far beyond the future of public broadcasting. It is about proving her worth at the Ministry of Culture at a time when the cultural sector is suffering and she has little to offer in the way of solutions. But after yet another setback, the future of the reform is in jeopardy.
Next week Rachida Dati will be watching another bill closely, one she cannot afford to see fail: the so-called 'PLM' law (for “Paris-Lyon-Marseille”) is returning to the National Assembly on July 7th. In the higher reaches of the state the minister of culture has become the staunchest champion of this proposed legislation from Macron-supporting Paris MP Sylvain Maillard. It seeks to reform the local voting system in France’s three biggest cities, introducing direct universal suffrage for councillors and mayors.
Supporters call the measure a fix for a “democratic anomaly”; some on the Parisian Right, more discreetly, see it as a way to ride Rachida Dati’s fame to swing the capital into their hands. “If the law passes, she’ll be all-powerful,” predicted one of her allies. On the other hand, “if we can’t get it through, she might as well not bother standing,” warned the leader of one party in the governing coalition. Emmanuel Grégoire, meanwhile, sees it as a “symbol of state machinery being used for one individual's gain”.
Despite efforts from President Emmanuel Macron and prime minister François Bayrou, the path to getting the bill through is a narrow one. A joint committee of MPs and Senators examining the text ended in disagreement on June 24th, confirming the gulf between the Assembly, which supports the plan, and the Senate, which strongly opposes it. And the government’s choice to resubmit the bill via the lower house risks alienating the Senate majority and its Les Républicains president Gérard Larcher - a valuable ally of the government ahead of the crucial autumn budget.
The fate of the 'PLM' bill will reveal a great deal about Rachida Dati’s political clout. For the time being, the leading figure of the Parisian Right lacks formal backing from any part of the presidential camp. And this proposal on electoral reform has alienated even much of her own side. Mayors of the capital's arrondissements, who are mostly opposed to the reform as it would reduce their role, have backing for their opposition from the city’s four LR Senators – including Agnès Evren, head of the Paris LR federation.
Agonising within Les Républicains and Macron's camp
After keeping her distance from Dati for much of her term of office, Agnès Evren pledged her support in late January, in a noteworthy interview in Le Figaro. “I call for a broad alliance to rally behind her,” the LR Senator said, deeming the 7th arrondissement mayor the “best placed” to win Paris for the Right. But the storm over the PLM bill has changed things. Since Evren and her colleagues decided to oppose the reform, the culture minister has cut ties: there has been no further contact.
On Thursday June 26th, speaking on Sud Radio, the minister sharply attacked a “few Parisian senators more worried about keeping their seats than about political change”. “They prioritise their titles and terms, and they’ll have to explain that to Parisians,” she said, also taking a swipe at Senate leader Gérard Larcher, described as an “accomplice in these machinations”. This was classic Dati, with all the risks that it entails when her party comes to makes its decision on a mayoral candidate.
For the former Sarkozy supporter, Bruno Retailleau’s recent election as leader of Les Républicains is hardly good news either. The interior minister knows she backed his rival Laurent Wauquiez in the internal race and that she has never liked him.
Several of Retailleau's close allies are pushing for a plan B. LR Senator Francis Szpiner, former mayor of the 16th arrondissement, is seeking the nomination himself. In private, the lawyer – who is himself under investigation for corruption – believes that Dati will be blocked by her legal issues.
The games played by petty local party barons have contributed to a slightly toxic atmosphere.
In the meantime, Agnès Evren has been named LR’s spokesperson and now seems to be rowing back from her earlier support. “She’d need to bring people together,” she told Le Parisien about the minister. “She doesn’t. She chaired a group that divided into three,” said one internal critic. “What counts in a campaign is the voters’ excitement,” retorts councillor Nelly Garnier, attacking the “games played by petty local party barons [that] have contributed to a slightly toxic atmosphere”.
The same lack of enthusiasm for the culture minister's candidacy is evident within the ranks of Renaissance, Emmanuel Macron's party. And yet the deal seemed done back in January 2024, when Rachida Dati joined the government. “I’ve been promised the prize of the Paris mayoralty,” she told supporters, according to a recording revealed by the television programme 'Complément d’enquête'. “We'll be assured that there will be a single candidate, and that we can bring about change. [...] Winning Paris, that's a condition for me.”
Any such “deal” - which has been denied by the key figures involved - now seems a distant memory. In just 18 months, Emmanuel Macron has seen the party machine he built slip from his hands. Now leading Renaissance, former prime minister Gabriel Attal feels even less bound by presidential pledges, given his frosty relations with the head of state. Some voices inside the party are urging it to field its own lists of candidates or back lists headed by Pierre-Yves Bournazel, the candidate from the centre-right Horizons party, an ally of Renaissance. These figures include Paris figures such as former minister Clément Beaune, now the country's High Commissioner for Planning, and former candidate Agnès Buzyn.
To buy time, Gabriel Attal has asked Franck Riester, Renaissance’s deputy general secretary for elections, to study options and report back after the summer break. At a press conference on Friday June 27th, Franck Riester confirmed that Renaissance wants to be “part of a municipal ruling majority”, but “not at any price and especially not at the cost of our beliefs and our values”. The MP gave the example of the “fight against discrimination” and anti-LGBT sentiment. “In Paris, it’s something we’ll watch very closely. Will there be a strong commitment on these issues or not?” he asked.
Looming legal issues
While inside the Paris bubble Rachida Dati’s candidacy to be mayor seems a given, both main parties in her camp are adopting the same stance: lacking any real enthusiasm, they would prefer to wait. But wait for what? The outcome of the legal investigations hanging over the culture minister comes up in every chat. “We’re all wondering if she’ll even be able to run,” said one rival. “No one’s been scrutinised like her,” insist her supporters.
The prospect of the minister having to stand trial is growing. Her request to throw out the indictment, in which the financial crimes prosecution unit, the Parquet national financier (PNF), called for her to be sent for trial, was rejected on Thursday June 26th. Under investigation for alleged corruption and influence-peddling, Rachida Dati is suspected of receiving 900,000 euros from Renault-Nissan between 2010 and 2012, while serving as a Member of the European Parliament. Judges must now make a decision on whether to follow the PNF’s request and send her for trial – and whether any such court case could take place before the city hall campaign.
In early June, Le Nouvel Obs weekly news magazine and 'Complément d’enquête' reported that Rachida Dati also received 299,000 euros from gas firm GDF Suez (now called ENGIE) during the same period, money she allegedly failed to declare to the European Parliament. The payment raises questions over possible lobbying, as she was vocal in support of the gas industry at the time. In early April, meanwhile, Libération claimed she had failed to declare more than 400,000 euros worth of jewellery to the body overseeing probity in public life, the Haute Autorité pour la Transparence de la Vie Publique (HATVP).
All this casts a longer shadow over the LR candidate’s future. But not enough to make her stand down, say those who know her. “She doesn’t care, she cuts through the crowd and in the end people give way,” is the verdict of someone who knows her. She herself made clear in Le Monde that even being sent to stand trial in the current case would not an obstacle to her ambitions. “It wouldn’t change anything, because I’m utterly determined,” she said.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter