France’s new cabinet mixes fresh and familiar, hinting at Macron’s priorities
France announced a new government on Friday that mixed veteran politicians from President Emmanuel Macron’s prior administration with surprise newcomers in key ministries, as Macron hopes to soothe a fractured country while continuing to reform it for his second term.
The announcement came just weeks before crucial elections that will determine control over Parliament, and several days after Mr. Macron, seeking to woo voters on the left, nominated Élisabeth Borne, a former labour and environment minister, as prime minister — only the second woman to occupy that position in France.
“It’s a gender-equal, balanced government, between those who were already ministers these past
few years and new figures who were picked because they were competent and committed,” Borne told the TF1 television broadcaster after Friday’s announcement.
Many names were familiar as Macron’s chief of staff, standing on the front steps of the Élysée Palace, listed the 14 men and 13 women who are now part of the new government. Including Borne, the cabinet is evenly split among men and women.
The number of veterans staying on, who included a mix of figures from the left and the right, were a sign that Mr. Macron wanted a measure of stability, with fewer political novices than in 2017.
Bruno Le Maire, a stalwart of Macron’s first term who has been economy and finance minister since 2017, kept his job. So did Gérald Darmanin, the tough-talking interior minister who became a symbol of Macron’s shift rightward on issues like security and immigration. Many ministers were shuffled from one portfolio to another.
But other names — or their absence — came as more of a surprise.
Jean-yves Le Drian, a well-known figure after a decade as France’s defence minister and then foreign minister, was replaced by Catherine Colonna, a respected career diplomat.
Colonna handled bickering with Britain over Brexit as France’s ambassador in London and was the spokeswoman for President Jacques Chirac in the early 2000s, at the height of a Franco-american spat over the war in Iraq. Now she will have to contend with the instability and uncertainty provoked by the war in Ukraine.
One of the starkest changes came from the education ministry, where
Jean-michel Blanquer — who argued vocally over his years there that American concepts on race, gender, post-colonialism and “wokism” were tearing France apart — was replaced by Pap Ndiaye, a prominent academic of Senegalese and French descent who studied for several years in the United States and who led efforts to establish Black studies as a discipline in France.
“I am a pure product of Republican meritocracy, of which schools are a pillar,” Ndiaye said in a speech at the ministry.
France’s far-right swiftly lashed out against him. Marine Le Pen, who lost to Mr. Macron in last month’s presidential elections, said on Twitter that Ndiaye was “the last stone” of France’s “deconstruction.”
In contrast, Jean-luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed movement, praised Ndiaye as a “great intellectual” but had little good to say about the rest of the government, accusing it at a news conference of failing to live up to Macron’s vow that his second term would be more attuned to social justice and environmental issues than his first.
“And so it will be the worst, that is to say continuity,” said Mélenchon, who hopes that the parliamentary elections in June will propel a left-wing coalition to victory, forcing Mr. Macron to name him prime minister, a situation most political analysts deem unlikely.
Other government newcomers included Rima Abdul-malak, who was appointed culture minister after several years as Macron’s adviser on cultural issues, and Amélie Oudéa-castéra, formerly the managing director of the French tennis federation, who was appointed sports minister at a key time for France, which is hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics.
MACRON’S NEWLY ANNOUNCED GOVERNMENT COMBINES CONTINUITY WITH CHANGE, AS FIRST-TERM VETERANS WERE JOINED BY NEWCOMERS IN TOP POSITIONS