The objective is clear: hold the first Council of Ministers by the end of the week. For this, the casting must be completed, and the questions are for the moment more numerous than the certainties.
A first day with your feet in the water. Just after his handover with Elisabeth Borne, to whom he succeeded Matignon, Gabriel Attal, the new Prime Minister, went to Pas-de-Calais, to the bedside of the disaster victims and the victims of the floods to whom he promised “At less 50 million euros” for the reconstruction of public facilities and “the abolition of the double franchise for households and businesses”. Then, Gabriel Attal returned to the Elysée to work on the composition of the new government with Emmanuel Macron.
Who will be the new faces? Who will take which morocco? It was around a dinner at the Elysée, one-on-one, that the new tenant of Matignon and the president discussed the casting of the new government. On the menu: the option of a “tightened” government around fifteen full-time ministers. But be careful, the formula is an old favorite of redesigns, a promise rarely kept. “After the wow effect, it all starts now”says a Macronist deputy for whom, “it will clear up”: “A big sweep, even if it means there are no more secretaries of state!”
Further negotiations are expected this Wednesday via “nourished exchanges”, as Matignon says. Moreover, the agenda of Emmanuel Macron like that of Gabriel Attal is almost empty, entirely devoted to this government casting: the Council of Ministers has notably been canceled. The objective is stated: it must take place, with a new team, before the end of the week.
One certainty: Darmanin remains in Beauvau
Regarding the new government casting, however, there is already at least one certainty: Gérald Darmanin will remain in post at the Ministry of the Interior. It is therefore one of the heavyweights of the government which is strengthened, even if it was weakened by the painful vote of the immigration law. The Darmanin case was also dealt with directly by Emmanuel Macron: the two men spoke at length on the telephone on Tuesday and “the president reaffirmed his confidence in him”indicates the minister’s entourage to franceinfo, who assures that Gérald Darmanin wanted to stay at Place Beauvau, claiming not to want to shirk, in “man of honor and duty”.
“Where I come from, we like to finish what we do”, he said to journalists. Enough to make Gabriel Attal’s ears ring, because this may sound like a first challenge, or rather like a first attack on the authority of the new head of government.
“It’s going to be trench warfare”
But there remain some difficult cases to decide. What place, for example, for Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy for seven years? What place also for the supporters of the left wing, after some have expressed their feelings, and even threatened to resign during the vote on the immigration law? “It’s going to be trench warfare”, predicts an advisor to the executive. This shows the scale of the project for Gabriel Attal.
The Élysée speaks of him as the “foal”face of this “Macron generation”. And that perhaps says something about the potential profiles of new entrants to government. Some are in fact pleading to promote young Renaissance deputies. And then, another unanswered question: who will recover National Education? Never until now has a Prime Minister reconciled Matignon and Education. But for the president’s entourage, this scenario is impossible.