Is this the price of audacity? The protocol order of the members of the government is above all a discretionary choice of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. And a symbolic fact that is not insignificant. It is therefore not insignificant that the name of Didier Migaud, the new Minister of Justice, comes in second position, the first of the 39 ministers announced by Alexis Kohler on Saturday evening at the Elysée. His predecessor at the Chancellery, Eric Dupond-Moretti, was in eighth place. “It’s a message between the lines,” smiles a ministerial advisor.
So Justice will be the most important sovereign ministry in the government architecture? The symbol now sounds like recognition, for the only personality from the left who agreed to join Michel Barnier’s right-wing team. Like a totem, it also takes on the appearance of a screen, while the two-headed executive was planning the advent of a government of national unity.
Through laborious negotiations, Michel Barnier ultimately failed to expand to the left. Unsurprisingly, the four parties of the New Popular Front had opposed a possible participation in the government. Matignon had finally turned, in particular, to former socialist glories, again without success. Some had clearly stated their refusal, like the pink mayor of Le Mans, Stéphane Le Foll, or the former Minister of the Economy under François Hollande, Arnaud Montebourg. Others, like Karima Delli, former EELV MEP and ex-president of the transport and tourism committee in the European Parliament, also polled by the rue de Varennes, chose silence. In recent days, the former president of the Court of Auditors and the HATVP had also remained discreet, without hiding anything of his ambitions from his friends on the left, while his name began to circulate for the Chancellery. To a pink MP and friend, worried about the rumor, he texts, laconic: “At some point, some people also have to decide to go and serve in the general interest.”
Pushed to Matignon by Yaël Braun-Pivet
Last August, in a one-on-one meeting with the President of the Republic, Yaël Braun-Pivet pleaded the cause of Didier Migaud… for Matignon. The Elysée ultimately gave little credit to this profile, deemed too “technical” and having left the political scene for over a decade, while keeping his name in the back of its mind. The President of the National Assembly, for her part, assures that the man is a “real politician”. He was. Socialist MP for the fourth constituency of Isère for over twenty years – he crossed paths with Michel Barnier in the Assembly -, Didier Migaud had as a mentor Louis Mermaz, then President of the General Council of Isère, on the recommendations of a certain François Mitterrand, a family friend.
A professional “Solferinologist”, a traveling companion of Laurent Fabius, and identified as a financier – he is the initiator of the famous organic law relating to public finances (“Lolf Law”) -, the man has climbed the entire ladder of electoral mandates: mayor of Seyssins, president of Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, general rapporteur of the budget of the Assembly then president of the powerful Finance Committee. Without ever reaching the slightest ministerial portfolio. Ironically, the man was canonized by Nicolas Sarkozy who, in 2010, appointed him head of the Court of Auditors.
During his decade at the Palais Cambon, when he handed in his Socialist Party card, the chief magistrate was respected. He was especially careful not to show bias… to the point, it is said, of wanting to make people forget his previous life. “In his speeches, he had a “everything political is dirty” side and called for distrust of political leaders”, a former magistrate jokes. Do not mention Didier Migaud to François Hollande’s former ministers! Guaranteed to give you hives… “Migaud betrayed us because he was appointed by Sarkozy, and has never stopped bothering us”, fulminates a former minister. The person concerned had pointed out the obvious “insincerity” of the financial texts, the most serious fault in financial law. While he was tipped to head the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life, appointed in 2020, one of his friends called out to him: “You’re going to be hated by all your buddies!”
New irony of history: in 2020, the HATVP had asked Eric Dupond-Moretti for “clarifications” on “possible conflicts of interest”, following his appointment at Place Vendôme. A few months later, the former Minister of Justice had described the administrative authority as a “populist thing”. On September 11, as reported by L’Express and The Chained Duckthe former lawyer arrives at the start of the Council of State: “Is Migaud there? […] It seems that you refused to be a minister because you were afraid that France would know the extent of your fortune.”
“Whether he is comfortable in a right-wing government is his problem…”
On the left, they are trying to minimize the idea that Didier Migaud is a “war prize”. While he is still well regarded by the old socialist generation, they still emphasize his distance from the PS circles over the last ten years. “He hasn’t really met any socialists since his time at the Court of Auditors, he’s completely out of the loop,” assures Marie-Noëlle Battistel, socialist parliamentarian for the fourth constituency of Isère, that of Didier Migaud, and former substitute for the person concerned. “He left the party and doesn’t have to answer to anyone, that was also his strength, analyzes the leader of the socialist senators Patrick Kanner. Afterwards, whether he is comfortable in a right-wing government, around people against PMA or same-sex marriage, that’s his problem…”
In the executive, the “miscellaneous left” minister, who is known to have made few public statements on the subject of ordinary justice, will have to fight with one of the most right-wing profiles: Bruno Retailleau, the new tenant of Beauvau. The latter, an eternal critic of “judicial laxity”, eager to ban unionization in the judiciary, had called in 2021 for a “penal revolution”. In government, some Macronists, uncomfortable with the Vendéen’s profile, reassure themselves by interpreting the presence of Didier Migaud as a counterweight to the excesses of the former. “I hope that there will still be a form of duo”, hopes the Les Républicains MP Antoine Vermorel-Marques, close to Michel Barnier. But his friend, Marie-Noëlle Battistel, is worried: “The gap is considerable with Retailleau… How does he imagine influencing anything?”
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