After the "Marianne Fund" fiasco, Marlène Schiappa out of the game

July 20, 2023

A member of almost all governments since 2017, Marlène Schiappa, a pure sugar macronist but a senior political figure, was finally swept away by the Marianne Fund scandal.

Ms. Schiappa, 40, has held the position of Secretary of State for the Social and Solidarity Economy and Associative Life since June 2022.

On the sets of controversial host Cyril Hanouna’s shows, on the front page of Playboy magazine or in the midst of laughing influencers invited to the Ministry of the Interior, this rare free electron within Macronie liked to break the codes of politics.

A follower of speaking “cash”, his solo “hits” had ended up tiring within the majority and his star had faded a lot.

Splattered in the resounding scandal of the “Marianne Fund”, she claimed in the columns of Corse-Matin that her “probity” was “intact”.

Previously she had summed up the affair to a political cabal with the far-right weekly Current Values: “The bottom line is my past positions on secularism and Islamism”.

A comment which earned him a scathing response from Senator (PS) Claude Raynal, the president of the Senate commission of inquiry into the Marianne Fund: “We can get out of this affair from the top, or by victimization. It’s appalling”.

Launched in 2021 by the then Minister Delegate for Citizenship (2020-2022), after the assassination of Samuel Paty, to finance “counter-speech” to radical Islam – the fund is at the center of a controversy amid strong suspicions of favoritism and mismanagement of public money.

The revelations of the scandal by several media led to the opening of several judicial, administrative and parliamentary inquiries.

In mid-June, during a highly publicized hearing before the Senate inquiry committee devoted to this file, the Secretary of State had tried to minimize her role in this scandal.

Without convincing: in its report published Thursday, the commission of inquiry squashed its action, considering that “the lack of rigor, opacity and casualness (had) led to the fiasco” of its initiative, described as “political coup” and “communication operation”.

Former lecturer and feminist activist, founder of the blog “Mom works” – a network of “active mothers” bringing demands around parental equality – Marlène Schiappa had been spotted by candidate Macron’s team in 2017 when she was elected local, deputy to the socialist mayor of Le Mans.

Very active on social networks, subscriber to television sets – her entourage had to dissuade her from participating in Fort Boyard, according to a survey published in early June in Liberation -, this communicator has been a tireless defender of government action since 2017.

Secretary of State for Gender Equality and the Fight against Discrimination (2017-2020), she was identified for a time for her blunders, but her personality also allowed her to popularize her favorite themes, including the fight against feminicides.

She was thus at the origin, in the fall of 2019, of the “Grenelle” against domestic violence, and has just recently published an essay on this theme, entitled “Just a little slap”.

Then, during her stay at Place Beauvau, as Minister responsible for Citizenship in the shadow of Gérald Darmanin, she dealt in particular with questions of asylum and the integration of foreigners, and had had to coordinate the reception of Afghan refugees after the Taliban took power, and that of Ukrainians more recently.

“Minister since 2017” and “feminist forever”, as she defined herself on Twitter, Ms. Schiappa also claimed to be a prolific “novelist”. One of his latest books, published in 2022, was titled: “Is It a Good Situation, Minister?”