From one historical record to another: Emmanuel Macron, who was elected President in 2017 – at less than 40 years of age – has just appointed the youngest-ever prime minister of France, to replace Elisabeth Borne and attempt to reinvigorate an embattled political mandate. Aged 34, Gabriel Attal, who has taken up his position at the prime minister's office on Tuesday, January 9, thus dethrones Laurent Fabius. This former PM, who had been appointed to the position at 37 by then-president François Mitterrand, had long been able to boast of having been the youngest in the position. He is also the first prime minister to have made no secret of his homosexuality. On November 5, 2023, he confided on public TV channel TF1's "Sept à huit" program that he had told his father: "Dad, I've fallen in love with a boy."
In recent weeks, while a change of prime minister had been being mooted at the Elysée, nobody truly believed in this particular outcome, since Attal seemed fresh – and indispensable – at the Education Ministry. Appointed in July 2023 to this role, he had tried to reassure a battered and crisis-ridden sector – and in just a few months had begun to prove himself.
Eventually, for the first time since 2017, Macron departed from his usual pattern of choosing a prime minister with a political profile, where he had previously appointed senior civil servants with a fine knowledge of the French administration – only to then relegate them to the rank of mere assistants, destined never to cast a shadow on him.
By appointing Attal to the premiership, the president – weakened by his relative majority in terms of MPs in the Assemblée Nationale – is implicitly admitting that he needs the education minister's popularity to breathe new life into his mandate. One of the few recognizable faces of the "Macron generation," Attal will have to carry out Macron's "civic rearmament," announced during his televised address to the nation on the evening of December 31, 2023. A spectacular promotion for "young Gabriel," whom former prime minister Jean Castex – to whom he is close – had sought, during the July 2020 cabinet reshuffle, to give a "bone to gnaw on," meaning a subject his youthful could vent his boisterous impatience on.
Since joining the government in autumn 2018, as junior education and youth minister under Jean-Michel Blanquer, Attal – who, at the age of 29, was already the youngest member of a French government – has had a faultless career: Government spokesman, budget minister, before arriving at the education ministry, where his first moves were acclaimed by French public opinion. However, in the summer of 2023 – just before his appointment – those close to him warned him against the demands of such a risky position, in which it is so easy to become tainted: "Don't do this crazy thing, it'll be the end of your political career!"
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