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Emmanuel Macron has chosen. The new prime minister is Gabriel Attal, linked to him since 2017, after a brief experience at local level in the Socialist Party. He will be the face of the new government, which will not only have to face difficult elections, in which the president’s coalition, Ensemble, could end up in third place (after the left, and then Le Pen), but also the last three years of a five-year who already appears tired.
The Macron method
It was a classic choice “à la Macron”: Attal is a relatively minor figure, like Edouard Philippe, Jean Castex and Elisabeth Borne, who immediately preceded him. Six months ago, the French Prime Minister of Sub-Saharan (Senegalese) origin was appointed Minister of National Education, replacing Pap Ndiaye: in this position he was noted for his ban on the abaya, the long dress used by Muslim women at school; for an anti-bullying policy, and a series of curriculum reforms. Previously he had carried out the functions of Minister of State, essentially undersecretary, for Public Accounts, alongside the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire and before that Secretary of State for Youth. He was also spokesperson for the majority and the government.
The youngest, the first openly gay
Attal has two “firsts”: he is the youngest prime minister of the fifth republic, and the first declared homosexual. After having had a relationship with the singer Joyce Jonathan, he entered into a “Civil Solidarity Pact” – in essence he got married – with the European MP Stéphan Séjourné, former advisor to Macron at the Ministry of Economy, now secretary of the presidential party Renaissance and president of the European parliamentary group Renew.
Attal comes from a multicultural family: his father Yves, lawyer, journalist, later active in the film sector (he co-produced Bernardo Bertolucci’s Io Ballo da Sola), was of Alsatian Jewish and Tunisian Jewish origins, and is related to the shareholders of the Group Galeries Lafayette; her mother, who also worked in the film industry, descends from a family of White Russians from Odessa of Greek origin and Orthodox religion.
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A look to the left
Politically he started in the Socialist Party with the Second Left, founded by Michel Rocard against the Marxist left and the one, sometimes coinciding, close to French Jacobinism, heir of the great Revolution. His nomination is therefore also an attempt to hold back the left of the presidential party, Renaissance, disappointed by the approval of an immigration law which, in reality, did not please either Borne or Macron himself – a fact which has definitively caused the star of the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin – and which, above all, allowed the Lepenists of the Rassemblement National to vote for the measure and to claim a “cultural victory”.