French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appointed 34-year-old Gabriel Attal to become the country’s next prime minister.
Attal will be the youngest prime minister since the founding of the French Fifth Republic in 1958, and will also be the first openly gay man to serve as the country’s second-most powerful politician.
Attal, a rising star in Macron’s Renaissance Party, has served as Minister of Education and National Youth since July 2023. During his tenure, he enacted a controversial ban on the wearing of the abaya in French public schools and has worked on raising awareness of bullying in schools.
“I know I can count on your energy and your commitment,” Macron said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, following the announcement.
Before leading the Education Ministry, Attal served as the government spokesman and then as minister of public works and public accounts.
He replaces Elisabeth Borne, who resigned from her post on Monday after a tumultuous 20-month tenure marked by an unpopular decision to raise the retirement age and urban riots over the summer after police shot and killed a teenage boy of Algerian descent.
Her departure was unsurprising, as it came ahead of a long-anticipated cabinet reshuffle.
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