Members of the government are struggling to respond to rumors about an upcoming reshuffle and claim to know nothing about it.
This is the political question of this return: Will there be a ministerial reshuffle? Fractures in the majority, search for new momentum, council of ministers postponed… There are numerous arguments to support the hypothesis of a change of team at the top of the State. But while Emmanuel Macron keeps the mystery, his ministers are ordered to answer questions from journalists as soon as they visit a set. So much so that they have to compete in agility to avoid saying too much.
“I’m not going to deny what’s in the air, since you’re talking about it, but I don’t know if it’s a reality or not,” says Olivier Véran on BFMTV. “I have already experienced periods during which there is talk of reshuffle,” recalls the government spokesperson. “We could have a little tension and relaxation. That’s not at all what I perceive in my colleagues.”
“Those who know do not speak…”
“It is the President of the Republic who makes these decisions, I never speak for him,” Sabrina Agresti-Roubache simply reacts on Franceinfo. The Secretary of State for Citizenship and the City assures that she sees “febrileness” on the subject “among journalists” but “not in the government”.
And the Minister for Industry draws out a maxim: “Those who know don’t speak, those who speak don’t know,” he says on France Inter. “There are many who speak, who, I think, do not know much. And then there are undoubtedly one or two who know. The President of the Republic, you know, it is his prerogative to appoint a Prime Minister and, with her or him, to appoint a government. And he, obviously, does not speak.”