French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday installed a former banker and ally as minister of the economy in an emergency reshuffle seen as the “last chance” to haul France out of the biggest crisis of his presidency.
In a clear break with the left flank of his ruling Socialists, Hollande caught everyone off guard with the appointment of Emmanuel Macron, a 36-year-old ex-Rothschild banker and architect of the president’s economic policy.
The top members of the government remained unchanged, but three rebel ministers who had publicly attacked Hollande’s economic policy were not in the lineup as the president sought to quell dissenting voices in his team and cement the country’s move toward a more pro-business outlook.
Photo: Reuters
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls defended the choice of Macron and his Rothschild past.
“So what?” he said when asked on French television about Macron’s banking background. “Can one not be an entrepreneur in this country? One can’t be a banker?”
“To be strong in the world, you have to have a strong economy,” Valls said, acknowledging that French growth had ground to a halt and unemployment was at “unacceptably” high levels.
The new minister has the unenviable task of revitalizing Europe’s second-biggest economy, which registered zero growth in the first six months of the year.
France’s Minister of Finance Michel Sapin and Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius were also confirmed in their posts, and Segolene Royal, Hollande’s former partner and the mother of his four children, remained as environment and energy minister.
The reshuffle was seen as an attempt by Hollande, whose popularity is at a record low, to wrest back control of the political agenda, crush internal party rebellion and push his economic reform policies.
Leading daily Le Monde described the Cabinet reshuffle as “the last chance for the president to save his five-year term.”
The new government faces a host of challenges, not least a budget bill in parliament that will be watched closely by the EU, which has insisted France slash its ballooning budget deficit.
France’s latest political crisis was sparked by a hasty government resignation on Monday after Valls and Hollande lost patience with former French minister of the economy Arnaud Montebourg, an outspoken leftist firebrand, and his attacks on the country’s economic direction.
“There is one line, and the members of the government cannot make a spectacle out of themselves,” Valls said.
Reshuffling the government without the three rebel ministers — Montebourg took two fellow leftists with him — was “an act of authority,” said the prime minister, seen as being on the right flank of the Socialists.
Montebourg insisted he was leaving on “amicable terms” with the prime minister, but the ejection of the three left-wing ministers from the Cabinet raised fears of a wider split within Hollande’s Socialists that could threaten his parliamentary majority.
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