Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
đ
NewsTranscript
00:00 For more, let's speak to our French Politics Editor, Marc Prohman. Hello to you. Marc,
00:05 when you saw the composition of the cabinet, what were your main takeaways?
00:10 Well, first of all, very few surprises because this is essentially a copy and paste of the
00:17 outgoing cabinet. The big change was obviously the change in Prime Minister. All the heavyweights
00:25 remain in position, Interior Minister, Finance Minister, Justice Minister, Defense Minister.
00:32 The only change is that the Foreign Ministry were Catherine Colonna, who was not very popular with
00:41 Emmanuel Macron, and that's what counts in a presidential regime as the French one. And so
00:47 he was replaced by Stéphane Séjourné, who is the head of Macron's party at the European Parliament.
00:53 So this was a bit of a surprise. This means that there are no women in charge of those key
00:59 ministries in France. There are women in charge of important ministries. The only thing that we've
01:09 seen is more ministers, several ministers come from the right. Catherine Vautrin was appointed
01:18 to an important and large ministry of labor and health. She was supposed to be at some point
01:25 Emmanuel Macron's choice of a prime minister back in 2022. At the last minute, it was cancelled.
01:31 She comes from the right. And the only, but it's a major surprise, is the appointment of Rachida
01:39 Dati. Rachida Dati is a well-known politician. She was appointed back in 2007 by Nicolas Sarkozy
01:49 as his justice minister. Since then, she's stayed on the political scene. She was until yesterday
01:57 the head of the conservative opposition here in Paris at the mayorship. And so this is a big
02:06 surprise because nobody expected Rachida Dati to become the culture minister, especially because
02:13 she has nothing to do with culture in her previous attributions. So this is the big surprise. But for
02:20 the rest, it's pretty much a classic government. We'll have to wait for the junior minister. There'll
02:25 be a second batch of appointments probably next week because you only have 15 ministers, they
02:30 cannot do everything. But for now, clearly, we have a government that is very similar to the
02:38 outgoing. Yeah. And you mentioned it shifted to the right. How much so and what will that impact
02:43 be moving forward? Well, clearly, this is what people already saw in the previous reshuffles.
02:50 Little by little, the government was moving to the right and also because of the policies it
02:55 implemented. I mean, the two reforms, the two main reforms that were pushed through, it was
03:02 hard, it was tough, controversial. Pension system reform, immigration bill were measures that tilted
03:10 to the right. And now, essentially, now you have the stamp because the new government,
03:15 Catherine Vautrin, as I said, she comes, she was a minister under Jacques Chirac,
03:19 Rachida Dati, minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, and all the heavyweights that I mentioned
03:25 are coming from the Conservative Party, except for the foreign minister. And if you add to that,
03:33 several of the ministers from Macron's left wing, it's relative left wing, but still,
03:39 Clément Beaune, who was the transport minister, is out. Olivier Véran, spokesperson for the
03:46 government, he was the health minister during the COVID pandemic, he's also out. Rima Abdul-Malak,
03:52 who was the culture minister, is also out. They might be reappointed as junior minister,
03:59 but clearly, the message is, and it's probably what the polls that we're seeing publicly,
04:04 but that Macron is devouring privately, are telling him the French are moving towards the right,
04:11 even the far right, some might argue, because who is the favourite to win the next election,
04:16 the European Parliament election, the national rally. So this might sound cynical, but this
04:23 is exactly what Emmanuel Macron is hoping for. A government with a new prime minister,
04:28 who is a known quantity and is popular, unlike all his predecessors, and a government that is
04:34 clearly shifting towards the right, we'll see whether that will allow him to forge alliances
04:40 in the National Assembly, because the equation is still the same, the equation that has daunted
04:46 Elisabeth Beaune, you only have a relative majority in Parliament, and that's going to be
04:51 the same problem for Gabriel Attal. Let's see if he's able to forge some alliance, maybe with a
04:58 small group of conservatives, they've already shown that they're not happy with Rachida Dati
05:04 becoming a member of the government, but as soon as she was appointed, they expelled her from the
05:09 party. So it will be a complicated dance for Gabriel Attal, we'll have to see in the next
05:15 few weeks if he can make some progress and perform better than Elisabeth Beaune at the
05:21 first Cabinet meeting. Emmanuel Macron said he wanted results, results, and results.
05:27 All right, Marc. Thank you very much, Marc Perlman, our French politics editor.