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The Élysée Palace unveiled a revamped cabinet under new Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, a month after President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election and a month before France’s crucial parliamentary polls. Macron drafted in Catherine Colonna, French ambassador to the UK, as his new foreign minister – while keeping Bruno Le Maire as finance minister and Gérald Darmanin as interior minister.
In terms of the biggest jobs, Macron is keeping on the centre-right Le Maire after he steered the French economy through the Covid-19 crisis – with a big task ahead as France grapples with the cost of living crisis racking most developed countries. Macron is also going for continuity at the interior ministry, maintaining right-winger Gérald Darmanin in the post.
Arguably the biggest change when it comes to the top positions is replacing Jean-Yves Le Drian with Catherine Colonna at the Quai d’Orsay, the foreign ministry. A longstanding figure on the French centre-left, Le Drian had been a senior cabinet minister for an entire decade – spending five years as then president François Hollande’s defence minister, before Macron poached Le Drian from the Socialist party to make him his chief diplomat.
Taking charge of the Quai d’Orsay as war rages in Ukraine, Colonna has strong experience for the challenge ahead – as French ambassador to the UK since 2019, she has navigated a delicate course between defending Paris’s interests in the often ferocious post-Brexit spats with London and focusing on the two neighbours’ shared strategic interests.
Here is the complete list of cabinet members:
- Bruno Le Maire as finance minister
- Catherine Colonna as foreign minister
- Gérald Darmanin as interior minister
- Eric Dupond-Moretti as justice minister
- Brigitte Bourguignon as health minister
- Pap Ndiaye as education…
Source : france24
