While names already mentioned during previous reshuffles were again in the running, Catherine Vautrin was finally appointed to succeed Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo on Thursday evening.
After 21 days at the head of the Ministry of Health, following the resignation of Aurélien Rousseau at the time of the psychodrama of the immigration law last December, Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo (Horizons) was not reappointed. It was expected. It’s now official. And it is a figure from the right and former minister of Jacques Chirac who succeeds him: Catherine Vautrin. At 63, the president of Greater Reims, once expected in May 2022 at Matignon, today finds herself propelled to the head of an expanded ministry, bringing together Work, Health and Solidarity.
Close to Jean-Louis Borloo, Catherine Vautrin previously held the position of Secretary of State for Integration and Equal Opportunities in the Raffarin II government, then that of Secretary of State for the Elderly. , still under Raffarin, and the post of Minister Delegate for Social Cohesion and Parity, in the Villepin government. In these three cases, she was always attached to Jean-Louis Borloo, then minister.
Before the appointment of Catherine Vautrin, persistent rumors
Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo being herself a member of Horizons, two names of Philippists stood out among the rumors which preceded the officialization of Catherine Vautrin as new Minister of Labor, Health and Solidarity: that of Frédéric Valletoux, deputy for Seine-et-Marne, and that of Arnaud Robinet, mayor of Reims and president of the French Hospital Federation (in succession to Frédéric Valletoux elsewhere). Both were already cited among the most likely hypotheses to take over at Health during the July 2023 reshuffle, before being eclipsed by Aurélien Rousseau.
A Renaissance MP was also cited: Renaissance MP Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, as mentioned by Le Figaro. This early Macronist distinguished herself in particular by taking a position on one of the key future subjects in the field of health: the end of life. She actually signed a column published in September in The Expressand also supported by Frédéric Valletoux, to defend the distinction between assisted dying and palliative care and not to confuse the two in the same text.