• France: Emmanuel Macron appoints Gabriel Attal as new French Prime Minister

The newspaper Le Monde reports that, since he came to government, the Minister of Education, Gabriel Attal, has carried with him wherever he goes, the desk that belonged to his father, who died in 2015. He moves it from office to office. From now on, this table will be chaired by the one who was Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne until Monday, after the appointment of Attal as his replacement.

When Macron was elected president in 2017, he was 39 years old. He was the youngest president of France. Today it is his dauphin, who, at 34, becomes the country's youngest prime minister. Attal represents the Macronism of the origins, which Macron claimed as "neither left nor right", and his challenge is to give a new lease of life to the government.

He is one of the president's loyalists, with a very similar profile: precocious and brilliant, attractive, with great skill as a communicator and a meteoric career. Like him, he is a product of the French elite, the kind that is already emerging in the classroom.

Attal studied at the prestigious Alsatian School and then at Sciences Po, the Institute of Political Studies. Both the president and prime minister come from the ranks of the Socialists, from the team of former President François Hollande. In 2017, when Macron created his party (La République en Marche) and won the elections, Attal switched to the Macronist camp and was appointed deputy.

He was the youngest member of the French government, at 29, when he was appointed secretary of state to the Minister of Education in 2018. In the summer of 2020, he was appointed government spokesperson. "I believe in Macron, I feel a real loyalty to him because I am convinced of his project. For me, only one thing counts: the triumph of the president of the Republic," he said in an interview.

The Most Popular Minister

Attal is also one of the most popular ministers in the government and, according to polls, is best placed to succeed Macron in 2027, when the presidential elections are held. Macron will no longer run.

Partner of Macronist MP Stéphane Séjourne, she has never hidden her homosexuality and a few months ago she told TF1 about the moment when she told her father (a film producer who died in 2015) that she had "fallen in love with a boy". She also narrated on television the bullying she suffered at school.

He has been minister spokesperson, which has given him a lot of visibility, and also head of Public Accounts, before being appointed head of Education last summer. It was in Macron's previous government reshuffle.

In the five months he has been in the Ministry of Education, he has not ceased to make headlines and has led some far-reaching reforms, such as the plan against bullying or the prohibition of the abaya, the typical garment of some Muslim countries and which the government considers to violate the principle of religious neutrality in the classroom.

He also launched a plan to experiment with school uniforms and has defended a tough and firm discourse to restore authority in the classrooms, where the seams of the country's integration problems are often visible. For this reason, the Education portfolio is one of the most important and priority, since the school is one of the pillars of the Republic.

In this rise to head of government, Attal has passed ahead of some ministers who sounded for the position, such as the veteran Bruno Le Maire, to the post of Economy and who also sounds to succeed Macron. Home Affairs Minister Gérald Darmanin has never hidden his ambitions, but he was badly burned after the immigration law was passed just a month ago.

To refresh his mandate, Macron changed his method: he changed Élisabeth Borne (62 years old and with no link to Macronism) for Gabriel Attal, a loyalist who has accompanied him from the beginning and with a similar profile. The dauphin now becomes the prime minister and this has its risks if he aspires to be a candidate for the Elysée in 2027, as he could burn out quickly and there are still almost four years to go.

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