This is one of the biggest surprises of the reshuffle and of Gabriel Attal’s government: the former right-wing minister Rachida Dati, LR mayor (since excluded) of the seventh arrondissement of Paris, is appointed Minister of Culture. An announcement which took the cultural world by surprise and which provokes disbelief or wait-and-see attitude.
2 mins
with RFI’s Culture department,
Many cultural professionals share the incredulous reaction of actress Anna Mouglalis, met on the sidelines of a feminist gathering and to whom a TF1 reporter announced the appointment of Rachida Dati to the Ministry of Culture. “ No ? OK… ” The culture has been very mistreated, adds the actress, but she “is alive and culture, its function, is also to resist. »
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The former Sarkozy Minister of Justice before becoming a European MP until 2019, a figure of the right, and who has never shown any appetite for artistic issues, will have to demonstrate all her political sense to seduce and convince artists who are very often marked on the left.
Nicolas Dubourg, director of a theater and president of Syndeac, the union of cultural and artistic companies, will judge on the documents. “ I don’t know Rachida Dati. I was just able to see, through the different campaigns she was able to run, that this was not specifically a sector in which she had positioned herself. So it is difficult for me, at this stage, to know what its orientations are in terms of cultural policy and how it will be able to listen to the sector, without applying recipes that are ready-made and come from other economic sectors. We are a sector that has been greatly weakened following Covid. We have been alerting the previous minister for months to ask her for refinancing of this public sector, refinancing which is not coming. So this will be our number one file when we meet the new minister and today, we hope that she will hear this demand. It’s a historic commitment that she is here to keep. »
Rachida DatiLR mayor of the seventh arrondissement of Paris therefore replaces Rima Abdul-Malakweakened in recent weeks in particular by its reluctance regarding the immigration law and its reservations onDepardieu affair.
The new tenant of the Ministry of Culture will be expected on the issue of sexist and sexual violence, maintaining the status of intermittent workers or public broadcasting.