Gabriel Attal's funny costume

Photo: Valery Hache Agence France-Presse French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, center, alongside Minister of the Interior and Overseas Territories Gérald Darmanin (3rd right), speaks to the media at the site of a fire that broke out during at night in a residential building in a popular area of ​​Nice, in the south of France, on July 18, 2024.

Anne Renaut – Agence France-Presse in Paris

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• Europe

Costume of prime minister to talk about the fight against drones during the 2024 Olympic Games which begin on Friday, costume of deputy head of the parliamentary group to prepare a “coalition pact”: Gabriel Attal alternates caps this summer, an unprecedented situation in France.

“Nothing should be allowed to escape us. » In front of a Fennec helicopter capable of intercepting aircraft, Gabriel Attal praises the mobilization of the armies in the fight against drones during the Paris Olympics, a crucial security issue for this global event.

Because in France, it is the Prime Minister who is directly responsible for airspace security. If a plane refuses to comply and it has to be destroyed — which has never happened — it is the plane that makes a decision at the end of a very short chain of command.

However, the young prime minister, appointed on January 9, no longer has all his prerogatives since the French president, Emmanuel Macron, accepted the resignation of his government a week ago, after the failure of his camp in the early legislative elections of June 30 and July 7, where he came second, behind the left and ahead of the far right.

Having become head of a “resigned” government, Gabriel Attal is only responsible for current affairs, into which, due to their exceptional nature, the Olympic Games have slipped.

< h2 class="h2-intertitre">Just in time

However, since he “resigned”, Gabriel Attal, who was re-elected deputy in the Hauts-de-Seine (west of the capital), has regained his parliamentary mandate and can sit in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament. He is now even paid in this capacity, and no longer as prime minister.

Fully a deputy, he was able to spend long hours in the National Assembly to consolidate a group of deputies from the Macronist camp very tested by the dissolution, but who appreciated his investment in the campaign. And quickly elected him president of their group the Saturday following the resignation of the government.

Caught up by the urgency of the news, Gabriel Attal nevertheless put his cap back on of Prime Minister last Thursday in Nice after an arson which left seven dead. On this occasion he brought along his Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, a former competitor for the presidency of the group in the Assembly and who was discreet at his side in front of the cameras.

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This trip did not prevent him from returning to Paris just in time, this time as a deputy, in the afternoon, to participate in the election of the president of the National Assembly and to all the votes that followed on key positions in the Lower House.

On Sunday, still in his group leader costume, he wrote to his deputies to ask them to formulate proposals for a “coalition pact” with the Republican left and/or right. As if he were working on a basis of government for his successor, who has still not been designated.

Gabriel Attal, however, assures that he “will not be” the next prime minister and his entourage specify that this “coalition” initiative is purely legislative.

“Appear”

The boundaries between executive power and legislative power have thus become very porous in France, while the Constitution stipulates that “the functions of member of the government are incompatible with the exercise of any parliamentary mandate”, unlike the United Kingdom, where ministers are necessarily MPs.

But the electoral code seems to authorize double hatting when the government has resigned, even if this configuration is regularly debated among specialists.

In Gabriel Attal's entourage, we underlines that the Assembly will no longer sit this summer – a time of a traditional break for parliamentarians -, which will allow it to wear its deputy's costume less.

“The fact that we are all in full force at our posts, I don’t know for how long, does not seem to me to be the response to the democratic vote that was expressed,” believes a minister. Because a resigning government can no longer be overthrown by Parliament, to which it is no longer responsible.

Faced with this “minimally baroque” dual role, unprecedented under the Fifth Republic, this minister is arguing for a new government to be found before the Assembly resumes its work, which begins in September in committees.

He has also decided: he will not participate in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on Friday. “I am not here to show off, I am here to manage current affairs,” he said.

No new government before “mid-August”

Paris — French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that he would not appoint a new government before the end of the Olympic Games in “mid-August” because it would “create disorder” during this global sporting event organized in Paris. “Obviously, until mid-August, we have to be focused on the Games. And then, from there […], it will be my responsibility to appoint a prime minister and entrust him with the task of constituting a government and having the broadest gathering that allows him to act and to have stability,” said the head of state during a television interview.

An hour before this interview and after 16 days of negotiations which almost imploded the union of the left, the partners of the New Popular Front – socialists, ecologists, La France insoumise – finally succeeded in 'agree on a name for the post of prime minister, a senior official unknown to the general public.

Lucie Castets, 37, is engaged in “associative struggles for the defense and promotion of public services”, but also “in the fight of ideas against retirement at 64”. She is also a “senior civil servant who has worked to combat tax fraud and financial crime,” states an NFP press release.

The NFP, which has claimed the post of prime minister since it came first in the legislative elections – ahead of the presidential camp, which came second, and the far right, third – but without an absolute majority, judges that Ms. Castets will be “strong in our complete commitment to her side in the government she will lead.”

France Media Agency