One day after Emmanuel Macron was inaugurated as France‘s youngest ever president, he announced the appointment of a centre-right Republican Edouard Philippe, the 46-year-old mayor of the port city of Le Havre, as France’s new prime minister tasked with implementing Macron’s economic reforms and to galvanize public support as France’s centrist president seeks to build a majority in parliament for his year-old party.
According to Bloomberg, which cited to French press reports, Philippe is an aficionado of Bruce Springsteen, his favorite actor is Sean Connery, and he’s a fan of the “Godfather” movies. Since 2010, Philippe has been mayor of Le Havre, France’s second-largest port, which was a longtime communist stronghold before drifting to the center-right as its economy diversified. Like Macron, he’s a graduate of France’s elite ENA, the National School of Administration.
Philippe is a Republican party MP close to Alain Juppe, the former prime minister who lost the Republican party’s presidential nomination to François Fillon in primary elections last year. By picking Philippe, Macron, who was a former minister in Socialist Francois Hollande’s government, is looking to broaden his appeal ahead of the legislative elections in June which many have predicted would be an even greater hurdle for the youngest ever French president than defeating Marine Le Pen.
Macron needs a majority or at least enough seats in parliament to govern or form a coalition. Without that, he could find himself a figurehead from the get-go, incapable of putting into action his campaign promises of economic modernization. Having already split the Socialist Party with his run for the presidency, Macron’s act of luring one of the leading young lights of the centrist wing of the Republicans now threatens to splinter that party as well.
Whether Philippe’s government can last beyond a few months depends on whether Macron’s young political movement can win a majority in the June 11 and 18 parliamentary elections or even take enough seats to lead a coalition. If a rival political formation takes command of parliament, it can vote out the government and impose a new one.
As for Philippe, he has alternated between being an elected official, adviser to various ministers, working as a lawyer, and as the head of public affairs for state-controlled energy company Areva. Despite Fillon’s poor showing, the Republicans are still hoping to win a significant bloc in the National Assembly, the lower house, after five years of unpopular Socialist presidency, the FT adds. They are counting on a network of local elected officials and the political inexperience of Mr Macron’s party, La Republique en Marche.
Philippe’s appointment may scupper those plans by unsettling the more moderate Republicans. Like Mr Macron, he is liberal on social issues and pro-business on the economy.
Philippe was briefly a member of the Socialist party in his twenties. A graduate of ENA, the elite university that grooms high civil servants, he worked as an adviser to Mr Juppe when the mayor of Bordeaux became a minister during Mr Sarkozy’s presidency. He wrote a weekly column in left wing daily newspaper Liberation during the presidential campaign.
via http://ift.tt/2pOKxE1 Tyler Durden