The reserved domain, “it does not exist”, used to state François Mitterrand. That is to say if we can include what we want. “Given the stakes, education is part of the reserved domain of the president”, advances in Point Emanuel Macron. Follower of formulas supposed to advance the schmilblick and even the mammoth, convinced that his presidential word is always as performative. Also follower of a new reading of the Constitution: what is important is for me, what is not is for the others. Because this is the implication when we talk about a reserved area. One thinks of Defense and Foreign Affairs, two fields in which the 1958 Constitution confers unique powers on the President – this is how he decides alone on the use of nuclear force, for example, or first line of representation of France on the international scene.
We had known Ministers of Education Ministers of State, number 2 in the government hierarchy (for example Lionel Jospin in 1988), this time it is the President who takes things in hand, with a true faithful – and a truly ambitious – rue de Bellechasse, Gabriel Attal. Advantage: there will be no line loss between the two. Disadvantage: when the former budget minister takes off, he can appear as a simple executor.
His predecessors have already had to complain about the attitude of Emmanuel Macron. Jean-Michel Blanquer, for example, had a very bad time hearing the candidate president, during his programmatic press conference on March 17, 2022, present education as one of the two “major projects” of his second five-year term. He, who remained a minister for five years, thought he had done useful work. His balance sheet seems thrown in the trash, like the baccalaureate reform carried out by the former rector defeated in the last legislative elections.
“It is the consecration of education as a sovereign domain”
Barely appointed, already weakened, Gabriel Attal? A “reserved domain” is, in fact, difficult to share, except to leave a few crumbs behind – Pap Ndiaye is well placed to know this. “I prefer to be in my place than in that of Gabriel, comments one of the media faces of the government. It’s strange to have put a politician in Education to keep all the announcements!” In our columns, the former minister and mayor of Meaux Jean-François Copé does not approve of the omnipotence expressed by the Head of State: “This formula is not admissible. the law, the work of national representation.” Quite the opposite of diplomacy and defense.
In the entourage of Gabriel Attal, we are not alarmed by the exit of the President of the Republic on this now officially Elysian square: “It is natural and it has been true since the beginning of the five-year term, indicates a close friend of the young Minister of Education. It is the consecration of education as a sovereign domain, the sign that for the President, it is a major national issue. A great deal of progress in our school over the past six years has been made possible by its investment.” Nor does it come as a surprise to François Bayrou, in charge of National Education from 1993 to 1997 in the Balladur and Juppé governments, who is pleased that his favorite area is in the hands of the tenant of the Château: “Education is the main issue for the future of the nation, it is therefore fair and normal that the President of the Republic, in charge of the future and the long term, is fully committed to it, slips to L’Express the High Commissioner for Planning From there, reflection must open up to the major choices and the solutions that will be recommended.” From there to say that the first of the allies does not dub all the tracks recommended by Emmanuel Macron, there is only one step…
It is understood, the school is not a toy with which one plays petty politics. But suddenly, who will really pilot the largest “liner” of the Republic? Emmanuel Macron, of course, if you hadn’t guessed it. Especially since Gabriel Attal, unlike Jean-Michel Blanquer, is not one of the relatives, nor the “darlings”, of Professor Brigitte Macron – whose accomplices of the president say to themselves that she must have appreciated the interview of the Pointwhich corresponds well to his thinking in educational matters.
Edouard Philippe’s competition
It is not prohibited to think that the President of the Republic nourishes, with this declaration, some ulterior motives. One, moreover, is not so concealed as that: after a year during which he at times slipped away to leave his government in the front line, Emmanuel Macron has the firm intention of demonstrating that he does not more reluctant to act directly and in person, without going through his ministers.
And then, it did not escape the Head of State that his former Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, will publish his new book in September, one chapter of which is devoted to education. A subject that the mayor of Le Havre has defined, since the creation of his Horizons party in 2021, as an absolute priority as much as as a site to be reopened urgently. It should not be that, on this question, the Ex of Matignon displays a more assertive voluntarism than the current tenant of the Elysée. That would look bad.
Finally, alongside his “reserved domain”, Emmanuel Macron also declared that history at school should “be taught chronologically”, which did not fail to make the teaching staff react, in particular the leaders of the school. Association of History and Geography Teachers, objecting that this was already the case. The president took malicious pleasure in “annoying the unions”, according to one of his regular interlocutors, while appearing as their first opponent. Their nemesis? For Gabriel Attal, it’s already taken.