Paris (AFP)
Emmanuel Macron appointed Jean Castex as Prime Minister, replacing Edouard Philippe, and charged him with forming a new government, the Elysée announced on Friday.
Ex-collaborator of Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean Castex, 55, mayor LR of Prades (Eastern Pyrenees), is since April the interministerial delegate in charge of deconfinement.
"He is a complete and versatile senior official who will be keen to reform the state and conduct a peaceful dialogue with the territories," said the Elysee.
"He is the man for the job" because, "known for working through dialogue and in a spirit of unity", he "will be able to implement the reconstructions mentioned by the Head of State in his last expressions in the context of the new path "of the quinquennium.
The presidency presents Jean Castex as "the man of successful deconfinement" who "is called at a critical moment in the health crisis".
His appointment "is a Macronian choice, consistent with the spirit of surpassing carried by the president for three years", underlines the same source. This man, who "worked with Xavier Bertrand, Nicolas Sarkozy and Edouard Philippe", "comes from the right but he is a social Gaullist".
He is "perfectly versed in the mysteries of Paris and an expert on local and territorial realities", "which combines experience of high civil service - he is a member of the Court of Accounts - and local mandates: both mayor, president of a community of municipalities and departmental advisor ", according to the Elysée. "Paris and Prades is an important contrast in the period of plural reconstruction which is beginning".
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