French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to appoint Minister of Education Gabriel Attal, 34, as prime minister, who will become the youngest head of government in the history of the Republic and the first openly homosexual, we have learned from a source close to the Elysée.
The appointment has not yet been made official by the presidency but was confirmed to AFP by a parliamentary official from the presidential camp. Mr. Attal will succeed Élisabeth Borne, who was forced to resign on Monday.
This is a spectacular rise for the person who is the most popular figure in the government and the presidential majority for one in two French people.
“Flawless”, “good student”, “the best incarnation of the Macronist DNA”: the phenomenon Attal, already the youngest member of the government in 2017, then the youngest Minister of National Education, finally imposed himself to succeed to Élisabeth Borne in Matignon to everyone’s surprise.
His appointment comes at a time when Macron’s second five-year term is mired in difficulties: without a majority in the National Assembly, faced with the rise of the far right, the French president is struggling to breathe life into his second term. The painful adoption of the very controversial pension reform, and more recently of an immigration law supported by the far right and having fractured the presidential majority, have left their mark.
Coming from the movement of young supporters of Dominique Strauss Kahn, a former heavyweight of the left who fell into disgrace after being arrested for sexual assault in 2012 in New York, Gabriel Attal was one of the first socialists to follow Emmanuel Macron during the creation in 2016 from his party En Marche!, a springboard towards the Élysée.
“A bone for Gabriel to gnaw”
After Mr. Macron’s victory in 2017, this son of a film producer, who attended the very posh École Alsacienne in Paris, was elected deputy in a right-wing stronghold of Hauts-de-Seine , in the suburbs of Paris.
Enough to enter the government through the back door: in charge of the modest State Secretariat for Youth, he stood out for his “capacity for work” and his “political sense”, as much as for his assumed ambition. “If I had forbidden myself things, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today,” he readily admitted at the time.
In July 2020, the prime minister at the time Jean Castex asked: “Have we found an additional bone to gnaw on for young Gabriel? »
To cut his teeth, the youngest finally inherits the position of government spokesperson.
From television sets to press conferences, Gabriel Attal reveals himself in this after-sales service exercise, marked by the COVID crisis, even if his confidence sometimes betrays him.
The fact remains that he stands out as one of the rare members of the government to make a name for himself in public opinion.
Ban on the abaya
After his re-election in 2022, Emmanuel Macron offered him the Budget, where his media ease allowed him to be one of the rare ministers sent to the front line to defend the unpopular pension reform.
The new reward is not long in coming: the prestigious Ministry of National Education, from July 2023.
“Shock of knowledge”, “school of rights and duties”, taking a position in favor of the uniform, ban on the abaya at school, the young, omnipresent minister, goes to the front, saturates the media space and appeals to the elderly populations who constitute the heart of the Macronist electorate.
A ministerial advisor was surprised a few weeks ago by the excitement surrounding this “apparatchik” who was readily mocked, including by his own people, for his “top-of-the-class smack-headedness”.
A “Mr. Macron junior, who specializes in arrogance and contempt”, for his part castigates the head of the deputies of the radical left, Mathilde Panot.