On the night of the first round of the presidential election in April Emmanuel Macron promised to “invent something new”. And rather grandly he declared: “Nothing should stay as it was before.” However, 26 days after his election, the head of state has decided that his new government will in fact be pretty similar to what has gone before, displaying direct continuity with his first administration. This became clear on Friday May 20th when Alexis Kohler, secretary general at the Élysée and Macron’s chief of staff – who has himself stayed in post - announced the names of the 27 members of the new government under prime minister Élisabeth Borne. No fewer than 14 of them had been members of the last government under Jean Castex.
This new government is indeed strikingly similar to the one it has succeeded. Despite promises of a “reinvention”, a record vote for the far-right and the social anger that has spread through the country in recent years, after first appointing Élisabeth Borne as his prime minister, the president decided to keep Gérald Darmanin as the minister of the interior and Bruno Le Maire in charge of the Ministry of the Economy. Éric Dupond-Moretti also retains his post as justice minister. In addition, Franck Riester and Clément Beaune are kept in place as overseas trade minister and Europe minister respectively.
Aside from the message of continuity that it gives, the decision to keep certain ministers on has provoked surprise. The move to retain Éric Dupond-Moretti could even be seen as provocative: he was placed under investigation in July 2021 for an alleged unlawful “conflict of interest” and potentially faces a trial before the Cour de Justice de la République, the court that handles cases for offences allegedly committed by ministers in the course of their duties. Indeed, the prosecution authorities at the top appeal court, the Cour de Cassation, called for such a trial in their submissions on May 9th.
Emmanuel Macron has thus chosen to keep and support the former barrister even though this goes against the principle that he himself set out in March 2017 that “a minister placed under investigation must resign”. And it is despite the many warnings that have been made, in particular from judges’ representatives bodies who recently alerted the European Commission, over the risks to the independence of the country’s justice system.
At the Ministry of the Interior Gérald Darmanin will now - alongside tackling other issues - continue to lead the fight against sexual and sexist violence. This is despite the fact that he is still the subject of an investigation into rape allegations. On two occasions he has been accused of using his position of authority – he was a mayor at the time – to obtain sexual favours. The two women involved both claim that he promised to intervene on their behalf, in the first instance over a legal conviction and in the second over a housing application.
The first case – an allegation of rape going back to 2009 made by Sophie Patterson, a former activist from his own party at the time, the right-wing UMP – is still ongoing. In January 2022 prosecutors in Paris recommended that the case be dropped. The investigating judge still has to rule on the matter. The second case, involving claims of “abuse of a vulnerable person” made by a resident of Tourcoing in northern France where Darmanin was mayor, was dropped in 2018. Gérald Darmanin has always denied the facts and insists that he had “never abused the vulnerability or person of anyone”. In 2020 there had been strong opposition to his appointment as minister of the interior, where he is de facto in charge of the police services charged with investigating him.
Climate and social policy ambitions have vanished already
For anyone left wondering after his election grandstanding, the head of state has now dashed any hopes of an abrupt switch to the left in his policies. Several key sections of the government are now in the hands of a group of former members of the rightwing Les Républicains (LR) and whose influence has continued to rise since 2017. The economy, domestic security and the defence of the nation are now overseen respectively by Bruno Le Maire, Gérald Darmanin and Sébastien Lecornu. Lecornu was promoted to minister of the armed forces even though his previous record was a modest one as minister for France’s overseas territories, an area where Macron failed to pick up many votes in the presidential election.
Between them, this trio control such vital services as the domestic and overseas intelligence agencies the DGSI and DGSE, military intelligence and the financial intelligence unit at the Treasury, TRACFIN.
Meanwhile, the crucial issue of climate policy will be overseen by three women: prime minister Élisabeth Borne, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who is the minister for energy transition, and Amélie de Montchalin, named minister for ecological transition and territorial solidarity. Five years after the short-lived appointment of prominent environmentalist Nicolas Hulot, and after several weeks of rumours announcing that political and media personalities had been recruited to tackle this key issue, the two people chosen to head up environmental policy (the “fight of the century” according to Emmanuel Macron) are not known either for their commitment or their expertise on the subject. This decision runs contrary to what was promised by the head of state between the two rounds of the presidential election.
Other members of the previous government remain in office but have moved to different posts. That is the case with Olivier Véran, who is demoted from his position as health minister to a more junior role as minister of state in charge of government relations with Parliament and democratic life. Olivier Dussopt becomes minister for work, full employment and integration; former government spokesperson Gabriel Attal is put in charge of public accounts; Brigitte Bourguignon is the new health minister, while Olivia Grégoire takes over as the new government spokesperson.
Such is the similarity with the old government that one wonder why it took Emmanuel Macron 26 days to name his new administration following his re-election. There are only a handful of top-ranking ministers who have left, including Jean-Yves Le Drian at foreign affairs, who leaves after ten consecutive years as a front-line minister – he served as defence minister under President François Hollande. Others are former education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and Roselyne Bachelot, who was minister of culture. The departure of Julien Denormandie, the former agriculture minister who is a Macron loyalist and who was tipped by some as a future prime minister, was one of the few surprises in the announcement of the new government. He explained in a Tweetthat he wanted to spend more time with his family.
Enter historian Pap Ndiaye, surrounded by rightwingers
The head of state has tried to send a signal to the Left by appointing the historian Pap Ndiaye as minister of education and youth. He has been director of the Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris since 2021 and is a specialist in African American and social history. Ndiaye replaces Jean-Michel Blanquer who hold diametrically opposed views on a number of societal and identity issues. A telling indication of this was the reaction of Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), who saw the appointment of this “self-acknowledged indigenist” as the “final component in the deconstruction” of France.
However, the fig leaf offered by Ndiaye’s appointment cannot hide the true nature of the new government under Élisabeth Borne. The centre of gravity of this administration is to the Right, more so than Macron’s first government in 2017 and its replacement in 2020. The three most political appointees in the government all come from that camp; Damien Abad, until very recently the leader of Les Républicains MPs in the National Assembly, takes on the portfolio for solidarity, independence and the disabled. The diplomat Catherine Colonna, who was close to President Jacques Chirac, leaves her role as ambassador to Britain to become the minister of foreign affairs, while the mayor of Angers in west central France, Christophe Béchu, becomes minister in charge of local government. He is a member of the Horizons party set up by Édouard Philippe, the politician from the centre-right whom Macron chose as his first prime minister in 2017.
Unlike five years ago, however, these new appointments are not likely to rattle the Right as an opposition force not alter the tectonic plates of French politics. Instead they seem to be the genuine preference of the head of state, who now starts his second term surrounded by loyalists. On top of those supporters whom he has retained, Emmanuel Macron has also promoted his adviser on cultural affairs, Rima Abdul-Malak, to become the new culture minister, while Stanislas Guerini, the managing director of the ruling La République en Marche (LREM) party, is the new minister in charge of the civil service. This is despite his much-criticised defence of an election candidate convicted of domestic violence. Yaël Braun-Pivet, a LREM MP and currently president of the National Assembly’s legislative committee, will be the minister in charge of overseas territories.
As in 2017, several figures from the public service and the private sector are to get their first taste of politics. Sylvie Retailleau, president of Paris-Saclay university, has been made minister for higher education and research. And Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, director general of French tennis’s governing body the Fédération Française de Tennis (FFT), is the new sports minister. Two magistrates also join the team; Isabelle Rome, who is junior minister in charge of equality between men and women, diversity and equal opportunities, and Charlotte Caubel who has been named junior minister in charge of children’s issues.
With its retention of key figures, the promotion of loyalists and the appointment of senior public servants, the first government of the new presidency is a neat summary of what Emmanuel Macron has been doing for the past five years, ensuring that no one figure gets too big for their boots and that there are no discordant voices. However, three weeks ahead of Parliamentary elections and three weeks after a re-election that lacked real political momentum, the lack of originality in this government means that it is unlikely to give the president a boost in public opinion.
Even his allies, Édouard Philippe and François Bayrou, can consider themselves hard done by. Philippe, the mayor of the port city of Le Havre and president of Horizons, only has Christophe Béchu from his party among the new government team, though Charlotte Caubel is one of his former advisors. As for Bayrou, president of the centrist MoDem party, and who remains the government’s high commissioner for future planning, he has seen his party’s influence slightly reduced. Agriculture minster Marc Fesneau and the junior minister for the sea, Justine Bénin, are its only two representatives.
Reacting to the new government team, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical left La France Insoumise, who is heading a new leftwing alliance for June’s Parliamentary elections, attacked the “dull and grey appearance” of the new administration which lacked “boldness”. In particular he attacked the retention of “leading figures” he said were responsible for “abuse in terms of social issues and for environmental irresponsibility”.
Mélenchon also mischievously cited an interview given by Pap Ndiaye to Le Monde in 2019. In it, the newly-appointed education minister stated: “As for Emmanuel Macron in the centre-right, while he is able to express himself eloquently … it’s hard to discern a consistent politics or even point of view.” It is an observation that could equally be applied to the first government of Macron’s second term.
Ilyes Ramdani