Paris (AFP)
Prime Minister Jean Castex is preparing to unveil the composition of the new government on Monday, a key step in Emmanuel Macron's attempt to revive the economy and his five-year term, before speaking on July 14.
After a weekend of speculation, the executive hopes to have closed things "for Monday in the day", announced to AFP the Elysee. "The government will be appointed tomorrow," confirmed Jean Castex on Sunday evening after having dinner with the head of state, stressing that the Minister of the Interior would be appointed "on (s) a proposal".
In total, the new team should count, according to the Elysee, "twenty ministers and deputy ministers". Edouard Philippe's former team consisted of 16 ministers, three deputy ministers and 17 secretaries of state.
Decided to accelerate the pace to make forget the debacle of the municipal and to tackle the post-coronavirus crises, the new executive couple should first announce the ministers, according to a close to the president, then the secretaries of state a few days later .
If some current ministers, like that of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer were seen at the Elysée Palace, the entourage of the Head of State assured that there would be "new talents" and "personalities from 'different horizons'.
- "Mission government" -
Priorities that he should detail during a new intervention, probably televised according to those around him, on the national holiday of July 14, reviving a presidential tradition that he had suppressed.
The Prime Minister, who had planned his declaration of general policy before the Assembly mid-week, will have to wait for the presidential speech to present his program "a few days later", according to the entourage of Emmanuel Macron.
But Sunday evening, the former deputy secretary general of the Elysée under Nicolas Sarkozy set the tone of his priorities, by paying a surprise visit to police officers from La Courneuve in Seine-Saint-Denis. He insisted on assuring them of the government's "flawless" support for the police and its attachment to "public security", in the midst of a controversy over police violence.
The day before, the former "Mister deconfinement" had reserved his first official outing for a high-tech company to highlight the "two challenges" to which he intends to respond: "the health crisis" and "the reconstruction of our economy and the protection of French "with" a relocation, a sustainable maintenance of industrial jobs and exposed to international competition "in France.
- The "not priority" retirement file -
Jean Castex also says he wants "at least a new social agenda" and settle "in the short term" the explosive pension issue.
Response from Philippe Martinez, the boss of the CGT, on LCI on Sunday: "All the unions agree today that pension reform is not a priority subject" in the face of unemployment which is coming.
As for the Ségur de la Santé, suspended at the end of the week for lack of agreement with the unions before the reshuffle, the Prime Minister wishes to conclude it "next week", when an envelope of seven billion euros is on the table for caregiver salaries.
His method? Social dialogue, and rely on local elected officials. But he warns: "I don't believe in soft consensus".
The opposition denounces it the will of the president to make new with old, like the MEP EELV Yannick Jadot who, fort of the green breakthrough in the municipal ones, sees himself competing with Emmanuel Macron for the presidential of 2022. He denounces "perfect continuity between Jean Castex and Edouard Philippe" who, according to him, "have never shown any interest in the climate or biodiversity".
"The time has come to make a frank choice" on ecology, exhorted Sunday the ex-Minister of Ecology Nicolas Hulot, who had slammed the door of the government in 2018, seeming to doubt the intentions of Jean Castex quaud il says ecology is "no longer an option" but "an obligation".
The Socialist Party and The Republicans also castigate attempts to "poach", like the patroness of socialist deputies Valérie Rabault, who claims to have been contacted.
In the sometimes funny little game of "enter, will not enter", the former Socialist Minister and former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal also assured that he was contacted on Saturday. Faced with the denial of a source close to the head of state, she provided AFP with text exchanges that she says she had with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian.
© 2020 AFP