AT two days beforeanother day of strike to national education, Jean-Michel Blanquer’s vacation in Ibiza, a popular Balearic island, is struggling to pass. It is from this popular Balearic island, a few hours before the start of the school year in January, that the Minister of Education revealed via an interview in The Parisian the health protocol expected by teachers and heads of establishments.
>> We explain to you why Jean-Michel Blanquer’s holidays in Ibiza on the eve of the start of the school year are going badly
Moreover, the opposition has not spared itself to denounce the “return of the bling”, in the words of Olivier Faure, the boss of the Socialist Party, or even a “dilettantism” guilty, according to Yannick Jadot (EELV), presidential candidate. Marine Le Pen, candidate for the National Rally, points to the “casualty” of the minister. Recent political history, however, could have been more inspiring, as government vacations are a long-standing embarrassment.
1999: Dominique Voynet’s boots and raincoat
On December 12, 1999, theErika, an oil tanker flying the Maltese flag and chartered by Total, broke up off the coast of Brittany, spilling thousands of tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the sea. The Minister of the Environment, Dominique Voynet, while on vacation on the island from Reunion, and who does not seem to have taken the measure of the looming ecological disaster, refuses to shorten his leave. She will tell France Evening : ”My presence on site with a raincoat and boots would be useless.” Faced with the outcry, she will shorten her stay and finally return on December 25. And goes there, in boots and raincoat.
2003: Jean-François Mattei’s short-sleeved polo shirt
August 2003, heat records follow one another and alerts burst out on a possible large-scale health crisis: the heat wave kills and the government is slow to react. On August 11, Jean-François Mattei, then Minister of Health, finally speaks in a short-sleeved polo shirt in front of the TF1 cameras from his summer residence in Var, where he is spending his vacation. The heatwave episode has meanwhile turned into ”catastrophe”, in the words of emergency physician Patrick Pelloux, and the picture is disastrous. You will have to wait for the August 21, 2003 so that the President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, speaks publicly about the health disaster, the tanned complexion, two days after his return from North Hatley, a village 150 km east of Montreal (Canada) where he had taken his leave with his wife Bernadette. It is estimated at 15,000 deaths excess mortality linked to the heat wave of August 2003.
2011: MAM and François Fillon in the planes of dictators
In 2011, on the eve of the Arab Spring, it was Michèle Alliot-Marie who sparked controversy. At the beginning of the year, The chained Duck reveals that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, her companion Patrick Ollier and his parents made two private trips to Tunisia in the jet of Aziz Miled, a close associate of President Ben Ali’s clan. On February 27, 2011, she tendered her resignation to Nicolas Sarkozy. She claims to have ”the feeling of having committed no fault”. The Prime Minister, François Fillon, anticipating new revelations from the chained duck, later confessed to having himself taken an Egyptian plane to Aswan, Egypt, from December 26 to January 2, at the invitation of the Egyptian authorities, accompanied by his wife and children, three weeks before the beginning of demonstrations against the regime of Hosni Mubarak.
2012: Mauritius for Aurélie Filipetti, Zanzibar for Laurent Fabius
Christmas 2012: François Hollande’s instructions seem clear: no holidays more than two hours from Paris for members of his government. “Presence and Vigilance”, abstract government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. This will not prevent the Minister of Culture, Aurélie Filippetti, from flying to Mauritius. First denied by his team, his trip some 10,000 km from the capital was finally confirmed by the minister herself. This trip, she justifies, “given by his companion” and she has “warned the President of the Republic, who authorized her to leave”. In January, it was his colleague from Foreign Affairs who was blamed for a stay a little too far away, pushing the entourage of Laurent Fabius to explain to Europe 1 that the latter “spends four days a week abroad”, that it is “more than used to working remotely“. The head of French diplomacy had taken “a few days off”, in the words of his adviser, in Zanzibar, an African island located about fifteen hours flight from Paris.
2019: Elisabeth Borne’s Moroccan vacation during the SNCF strike
In December 2019, despite the sobriety imposed by Matignon on all the ministers of the government of Édouard Philippe and the transport strike which paralyzed France, Elisabeth Borne, then Minister for the Ecological and Solidarity Transition and Minister responsible for the Secretary of State for Transport, flies away for a few days of vacation in Marrakech. “Some have found this subject to be fascinating and I am convinced that it does not interest the French”, will indicate the minister. Strike obliges, thousands of French people, that winter, had given up taking the train to join their families for the holidays.