As he leaves government, Gérald Darmanin takes stock of his tenure at the Ministry of the Interior

The “top cop in France” spoke to France Télévisions. “I’m leaving after more than four years without incident and after the success of the Olympic Games,” he said happily.

“For me, freedom begins!” In office for four years and 76 days, Gérald Darmanin said his farewells on Friday, September 20, on the social network Xat the Ministry of the Interior. “Usually the Minister of the Interior leaves because something went wrong”he confided to France Télévisions. “For my part, I am leaving after more than four years without incident and after the success of the Olympic Games.”he says happily.

“I also learned patience here.”

Gerald Darmanin

to France Televisions

As he leaves his post, the now ex-minister draws lessons from his long time at Place Beauvau, which could serve as a user guide for his successors. “When you don’t prepare here, it fails. It’s also a ministry of planning and preparationhe explains. Energy and movement are not enough and I probably made some mistakes at the beginning.”

Gérald Darmanin has indeed experienced some failures, such as the fiasco on world television of the Champions League final at the Stade de France in May 2022, two years before the Paris Olympic Games, and political difficulties, with the forced vote of his immigration law thanks to the votes of the National Rally after the adoption by the deputies of a motion of rejection which fractured the majority and the government.

Re-elected as deputy for the 10th constituency of the North in the early legislative elections of July, benefiting in particular from the Republican front, the former mayor of Tourcoing will return to the benches of the National Assembly. As “France’s top cop”, “I saw a fragmented society”explains Gérald Darmanin in reference to the book by Jérôme Fourquet, The French Archipelago. “Islands of people who live in parallel Frances.”

“There are difficulties in building a country, unbearable discriminations that we have not been able to listen to and resolve. I will get to work on them.”

Gerald Darmanin

to France Televisions

The elected representative from the North promises to work in particular on the issue of remuneration for work, part-time work, so many political markers that he wants to carry in the name of a “popular” France and that he claims as constitutive of his political identity. So many reflections that Gérald Darmanin intends to integrate into a book that he will write, he confides, on his years spent at Place Beauvau, he who took notes almost daily.

Once mentioned at the Quai d’Orsay, he will ultimately not be part of the Barnier government, but that does not mean that we will no longer hear from him, quite the contrary. This is evidenced by his attacks this week against a possible tax increase envisaged by the new Prime Minister, with whom relations are, to say the least, cool, like other executives in the presidential camp.

His supporters believe that this is the right time to leave the government, less than three years before the next presidential election.. “He wants to contribute in one way or another to the election of the next President of the Republic,” smiles a parliamentarian who knows him well, without specifying whether it is in the first place, that of the candidate, that he imagines…