France gets its youngest and first openly gay prime minister

PARIS – In a typically bold attempt to revive his second term in office, President Emmanuel Macron has appointed 34-year-old Gabriel Attal as his new prime minister, replacing 62-year-old Elisabeth Borne, who has made no secret of the fact that she didn’t like being forced to leave.

Mr Attal, who previously served as education minister and has held several government positions since Mr Macron was elected in 2017, will become France’s youngest and first openly gay prime minister. A recent one Opinion poll Ipsos-Le Point suggested he is France’s most popular politician, albeit with an approval rating of just 40 percent.

Mr Macron, whose second term was marked by a protracted conflict over a pension law that raised the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 and by a restrictive immigration law that pleased the right, made it clear that he saw Mr Attal as a leader in his policies . own disruptive image.

“I know I can count on your energy and your commitment to push through the project of civilian rearmament and regeneration that I have announced,” Macron said in a speech. a message addressed to Mr Attal on X, formerly Twitter. “True to the spirit of 2017: transcendence and daring.”

Mr Macron was 39 when he divided France’s political system that year to become the youngest president in French history. Mr Attal, a loyal ally of the president since joining Macron’s campaign in 2016, will be 38 by the time of the next presidential election in April 2027, and would likely become a presidential candidate if his term is successful.

This prospect is not attractive to an ambitious older French political corps, including Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, and Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, whose presidential ambitions are no secret. But for Mr. Macron, who has a term-limit, it would put a protégé in the succession mix.

“I owe him absolutely everything,” Mr Attal said of Mr Macron in an interview with Le Parisien last month.

Alain Duhamel, a prominent French author and political commentator, described Mr. Attal as “a truly instinctive political talent and the most popular figure in an unpopular government.” But, he said, a huge challenge would test Mr Attal because “Macron’s second term lacked clarity and was a time of drift, apart from two unpopular reforms.”

Although France is by no means in crisis – its economy has proven relatively resilient in the face of inflationary pressures and foreign investment is pouring in – it sometimes appears to be in a not uncharacteristic funk, politically paralyzed, sharply divided and governable with intermittent appeal on a constitutional instrument that allows bills to be passed in the lower house without a vote.

Mr Macron, not known for his patience, had grown tired of this sense of impasse. He decided to force Ms Borne out after 19 months, even though she had worked with great zeal in the trenches of his pension and immigration reforms. Her hard-nosed demeanor was rarely faulted, but she had none of the razzmatazz to which the president is prone.

“You have informed me of your desire to change prime minister,” Ms Borne wrote in her resignation letter, before noting how passionate she had been about her mission. Her dissatisfaction was clear.

In short, Mr. Macron had dismissed Ms. Borne, as is the prerogative of any president of the Fifth Republic, and had done so on social media in a way that, as Sophie Coignard wrote in the weekly Le Point, “remarkably lacked elegance.” ”

But with European Parliament elections and the Paris Olympics looming this summer, Macron, whose own approval rating has fallen to 27 percent, wanted a change in the government’s image.

“It’s a generational shock and a clever communications coup,” says Philippe Labro, author and political observer.

Mr Attal has demonstrated the power and top-down authority that Macron loves during his six months as Education Minister. He started last summer by declaring that ‘the abaya should no longer be worn in schools’.

His order, which applies to public middle and high schools, banned the loose long cloak worn by some Muslim students and created a new storm over French identity. In keeping with France’s commitment to “laïcité,” or roughly secularism, “you should not be able to distinguish or identify the students’ religion just by looking at them,” Mr. Attal said.

The measure sparked protests among France’s large Muslim minority, which generally sees no reason that young Muslim women should be told how to dress. But France’s center-right and far-right approved it, and so did Mr. Macron.

In a measure set to take effect in 2025, Mr Attal has also imposed stricter academic conditions on entry to secondary schools in a sign of his determination to restore discipline.

For these and other reasons, Mr. Attal hates the left. Mathilde Panot, the leader of the parliamentary group of far-left representatives of the France Unbowed party, the second-largest opposition group in the National Assembly, responded to his appointment by describing Mr. Attal as “Mr. Macron Junior, a man who has specialized in arrogance and contempt.”

The comment foreshadowed the difficulties Attal is likely to face in the 577-seat Assembly, where Macron’s Renaissance Party and its allies do not have an absolute majority. The change of prime minister has changed little or nothing for Macron in the difficult arithmetic of governing. His centrist coalition has 250 seats.

Still, Mr. Attal may be a more attractive figure than Ms. Borne of the center-right, on whom Mr. Macron depended to pass the immigration law. Like Mr Macron, the new prime minister comes from the ranks of the Socialist Party, but has since moved to the right. Mr. Attal is also a very flexible politician, in the image of the President.

The specter that keeps Macron awake at night is that his presidency will end with the election of Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader whose popularity has been steadily rising. She dismissed Mr Attal’s appointment as “a childish ballet of ambition and egos.” Yet the new Prime Minister’s performance in giving France direction and purpose will negatively impact its election chances.

Mr Macron wants a more competitive, dynamic French state, but any new package of reforms that further cuts the country’s extensive state-funded social protections to reduce the budget deficit is likely to face overwhelming opposition. This will be just one of many dilemmas facing the president’s chosen prodigy.