When it was announced that Rachida Dati had been appointed to the Culture Ministry, Carine Rolland thought she'd fall off her chair. "I've never seen her at a vernissage or at the theater," said the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of culture. When, on Wednesday, January 17, the newly appointed minister announced on RTL radio that she would be running for Paris mayor in 2026, the Socialist politician was stunned again.

The former head of the Les Républicains (right-wing) opposition group at Paris City Hall had certainly never made any secret of her mayoral ambitions. And her arrival at the ministry was accompanied by rumors of a deal with President Emmanuel Macron for him to endorse her in the next municipal elections. "But I didn't expect her first announcement as minister to be her candidacy for mayor," said Rolland. "Did you listen to her? She talked about herself, about Paris, but not about culture and even less about creation."

Coincidence or irony, the next Paris city council deliberations begin on February 6, precisely on the subjects of "culture, heritage and memory." These are issues that account for some €432 million of the city's budget, and which Dati has never addressed. Except, very occasionally, to condemn the budgetary excesses of the Théâtre du Châtelet or to oppose the principle of lottery admission to conservatories, which are overwhelmed by applications. "The reality," admitted Rolland, "that her group votes for the vast majority of issues relating to culture."

Yet many elected officials dread the incoming clashes between Dati, never short of a hill to die on, and Anne Hidalgo, who, in an interview on January 14, in La Tribune Dimanche, opened hostilities by condescendingly declaring that her rival embodied a "Trumpization of culture."

"We have no problem with Rachida Dati as minister of culture, as long as she does her job as minister of culture," said the Paris mayor's office. Dati's entourage had the same desire for appeasement, invoking the continuity of the state: "The state's heritage role, of which the minister of culture is the guarantor, is part of a precise framework, with rules that do not change with each minister."

Aurélien Véron, a spokesman for the right-wing Paris opposition group, is equally cautious. "Rachida won't go for a systematic clash, but she will do so when she has the chance." A warning that is anything but rhetorical.

At the culture ministry, Dati now has veto power over several projects in a city whose heritage is listed. Starting with public space projects, which require approval from the Architectes des Bâtiments de France (ABF), who are in charge of historic and heritage preservation.

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