When Rachida Dati met the woman she was replacing, Rima Abdul Malak, right before the handover ceremony at the Culture Ministry on Friday, January 12, she was blunt: "I really like culture, but it's not what I asked for. As far as I knew, until Thursday, January 11, at 2 pm, you were staying." The surprise nomination unfolded in a matter of days. "I never thought I'd be culture minister in 2024," confirmed Dati, four days later, as she cut slices of a giant three kings' cake at the city hall of Paris's 7th arrondissement, of which she is the mayor. Nor had she imagined that she would be joining President Emmanuel Macron for her first public appearance as culture minister, on Thursday, January 18. Together, they visited the Ateliers Médicis in Clichy-sous-Bois, a northeastern Paris suburb where First Lady Brigitte Macron resumed teaching French part-time a few years ago.
On the morning of the day of the reshuffle, when Dati had breakfast at the city hall of the 7th arrondissement with actor Vincent Lindon, she still wasn't expecting to land at the Culture Ministry. She was hoping for a more powerful position. "There was talk of Gérald Darmanin moving," Dati told several people afterward, referring to the interior minister. However, he stayed. She would also have liked the Armed Forces Ministry: "It wasn't possible. As for education, it almost happened... But no."
It took many Telegram messages from Macron for her to finally accept the Culture Ministry. She cited her lifestyle. Things aren't always easy at the moment, her daughter is hitting teenage years, she told him. He insisted. He had no doubt that she has the necessary "energy." She was also thinking about her party, Les Républicains (LR, right), in which she held a key position, as president of the national council, but with which she would inevitably have to break. After her appointment, LR president Eric Ciotti wasted no time in announcing the new minister's exclusion from the party.
A few hours before the government was officially named, she alerted and sought the advice of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, also of LR. He was the man who first made her justice minister in 2007, and to whom she has stayed loyal. "Go for it!" replied Sarkozy, who has advocated for his party to join Macron's coalition. Endorsing her choice was his only role in the matter. When some people congratulated him after the new government team was announced – including two LR stalwarts, the other being Health and Labor Minister Catherine Vautrin – Sarkozy put on a false modesty: "Don't go talking about my influence all over Paris!"
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