French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Tuesday appointed 34-year-old education minister Gabriel Attal as his new prime minister in a bid to breathe new life into his second term ahead of the European parliament elections.
AP news report that Attal will be France’s youngest prime minister and the first to be openly gay.
The change signals a desire for Macron to try to move beyond last year’s unpopular pension and immigration reforms and improve his centrist party’s chances in the June EU ballot. Opinion polls show Macron’s camp trailing far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s party by around eight to ten percentage points.
Attal, a close Macron ally who became a household name as government spokesman during the Covid pandemic, will replace outgoing PM Elisabeth Borne.
He is considered one of the country’s most popular politicians and Attal has made a name for himself as a savvy minister, at ease on radio shows and in parliament.
Attal and Macron would have a combined age just below that of Joe Biden, who is running for a second mandate in this year’s US presidential election.
Attal was elected to the French National Assembly in June 2017, representing the Hauts-de-Seine’s 10th constituency.
On October, 16, 2018, Attal was appointed junior minister to the Minister of National Education and Youth, Jean-Michel Blanquer. At 29, he was the youngest member of a government under the Fifth Republic, beating the previous record set by François Baroin in 1995 by a few months.
He was the government spokesperson under Prime Minister Jean Castex from 2020 to 2022.
He became Minister of Public Action and Accounts in the government of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne in May 2022.
In July 2023, Attal was appointed Minister of National Education and Youth in the 2023 French government reshuffle.
At the age of 34, he became the youngest person to hold that office under the Fifth Republic. In this position, he announced the ban on the Islamic headdress in French schools.
There is media speculation that he will be a candidate to succeed Macron in the 2027 French presidential election.
Macron’s centrists lost their majority in parliament last year, forcing the government into political maneuvering and using special constitutional powers to be able to pass laws.
The tough negotiations over the immigration bill and heated parliament debate raised questions over the ability of Borne’s government to pass future major legislation. Macron’s centrist alliance was able to pass the measure only after making a deal with the conservative Republicans party, which prompted a left-leaning government minister to quit and angered many people in Macron’s own alliance.
Borne also faced mass protests last year, often marred by violence, against a law to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, and days of riots across France triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teen.
