The newspaper Le Monde tells that, since he came to the Government, the until now Minister of Education, Gabriel Attal, carries with him wherever he goes the desk that belonged to his father, who died in 2015. He moves it from office to office. This table with emotional value will be presided over from now on by the person who, until Monday, held the position of prime minister, Élisabeth Borne. Gabriel Attal will be his replacement.
When Emmanuel Macron was elected president in 2017 he was 39 years old. He was the youngest president of France. Today she is his dolphin, who, at 34, becomes the country’s youngest prime minister. Attal represents the Macronism of the origins, which Macron claimed as “neither left nor right”, and his challenge is to give new life to a Government weakened by the lack of a parliamentary majority and successive crises.
He is one of the president’s loyalists, with a very similar profile: precocious and brilliant, attractive, with great communication skills and a meteoric career. Like him, he is a product of the French elite, the kind that already stands out in the classrooms: Attal studied at the prestigious Alsatian School and, later, at Sciences Po, the Institute of Political Studies.
Both president and prime minister come from the socialist ranks, from the team of former president François Hollande. In 2017, when Macron created his party (The Republic on the Move) and won the elections, Attal moved to the Macronist camp and was named deputy.
He was the youngest member of the French Government, at 29 years old, when he was appointed Secretary of State to the Minister of Education in 2018. In the summer of 2020 he was already a spokesperson for the Government. “I believe in Macron, I feel true loyalty to him because I am convinced of his project. For me only one thing matters: the triumph of the President of the Republic,” he said in an interview.
Attal is also one of the most popular ministers in the Government and, according to polls, is the one best placed to succeed Macron in 2027, when the presidential elections are held. Macron will no longer appear.
Partner of the Macronist deputy Stéphane Séjourne, she has never hidden her homosexuality and a few months ago she told the TF1 channel about the moment she told her father (a well-known film producer who died in 2015) that she had “fallen in love with a boy” . She also narrated on television the bullying she suffered at school.
The fact that he had been spokesperson minister gave him a lot of visibility; he was also head of Public Accounts, before being named head of Education last summer. It was in Macron’s previous government reshuffle.
This period has been when it has gained the most popularity. In the five months that he has been in the Ministry of Education, he has not stopped making headlines and has led some important reforms, such as the plan against bullying or the ban on the abaya, the typical garment of some Muslim countries and that the Government considers that it violates the principle of religious neutrality in classrooms.
He also launched a plan to experiment with the school uniform and has defended a tough and firm discourse to return authority in the classrooms, where the seams of the integration problems in the country are often seen. For this reason, the Education portfolio is one of the most important and priority, since the school is one of the pillars of the Republic.
In this rise to head of Government, Attal has passed ahead of some ministers who were considered for the position, such as the veteran Bruno Le Maire, in charge of the Economy and who is also being considered as an option to succeed Macron. The Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, has never hidden his ambitions, but he came out badly burned after the processing of the immigration law just a month ago.
This change of character in the Executive illustrates the moment of fragility that Macron is experiencing in his second term. He was re-elected a year and a half ago. Without a majority in the Assembly, his hands are tied to continue approving laws, while Marine Le Pen’s extreme right is rising in the polls. This also occurs when France faces a complex moment: it is preparing for the Olympic Games that will test security in the country and in June European elections are held, which give Le Pen an advantage in the polls.
To refresh his mandate, Macron changes method: he replaces Élisabeth Borne (62 years old and has no connection with Macronism) with Gabriel Attal, a faithful who has accompanied him since the beginning and with a profile similar to his. The Dauphin now becomes the prime minister and this has risks for him if he aspires to be a candidate for the Elysée in 2027, since he could burn out quickly and there are still almost four years left.