MARSEILLE, France (CN) — Gabriel Attal, France’s 35-year-old prime minister, is cornered.
The government is sounding alarms over the country’s economic slowdown and budget deficit, calling for an action plan. All eyes are on Attal to devise a solution that appeals to both left- and right-wing policymakers. And recent propositions — including reducing unemployment benefits and raising taxes on certain streams of income — haven’t gone over well on either end of the political spectrum. So what is he to do?
Attal is the most powerful politician in France after President Emmanuel Macron. Though critics have called him Macron’s mouthpiece and mirror — not in a complimentary way — that is effectively the job description. The French constitution stipulates that voters don't elect the prime minister — the president gets to personally choose someone whose role is to carry out his agenda.
“Attal owes his job to Macron entirely — he was appointed,” Philippe Marlière, a political scientist and professor at University College London, told Courthouse News. “They’re not equals, that’s the first point.”
Attal and Macron come from similar professional backgrounds. They both skyrocketed to the top of the political hierarchy, bypassing local positions for national ones. Macron became the country's youngest president at 39 years old in 2017, after forming his political party just one year prior.
And Attal became the country’s youngest prime minister when Macron hired him this January, at age 34. Like Macron, Attal comes from a center-left background but has recently come under criticism for drifting to the right.
Before taking his new position, Attal was the education minister, a role that got him nationwide attention for banning the abaya in schools and floating the idea of reinstating uniforms, which both sparked controversy. But he doesn’t have an extensive record of political successes and scandals — and that is also one of his strengths.
“He doesn’t have the type of background where you could point to achievements, failures … . He’s still relatively untested,” Marlière said. “It’s unusual to be prime minster at this age with relatively little experience, but I think he was chosen exactly for that.”
Public opinion on Attal has been relatively positive. While normally the president has better approval ratings than their prime minister — since the prime minister is the one on the ground, implementing the agenda — now, the roles are reversed, according to Marlière.
“He’s seen, probably because of his young age, as quite dynamic and determined, not afraid of taking and answering questions from the opposition in Parliament, this kind of thing,” Marlière said. “I think Attal was part of a rebranding of Macron’s second term.”
Others see him as a return to the president's beginnings.
“He incarnates the initial promises of the Macronie,” Romain Pasquier, a director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, told Courthouse News, referring to Macron’s political agenda and entourage. “He’s been close to Macron since Macron came to power.”
His young age and charisma also came into play in his appointment; strategically, experts say this could have been a move to rival the far-right Jordan Bardella, who has been rising in the polls. Both are seen as figures that can attract younger voters.
“I think Jordan Bardella, especially among young people, is making a breakthrough in terms of popularity, and Emmanuel Macron is perfectly aware of that,” Pasquier said. “I think he tried to find someone who could rival Jordan Bardella, in terms of communication but also in social media presence.”
While Bardella has been lauded for his “punchlines,” the one-line jabs that draw comparisons to Donald Trump, Attal has become known as the “word sniper.”
That hasn’t always played in his favor. Some of the main criticism surrounding Attal is that he’s “all talk and no action,” according to Pasquier, which is a criticism that Macron has faced, too.
And now, despite his relative popularity and smooth start as prime minister, Attal's proposals could risk upsetting voters.
In a boutique in the center of Marseille, Solange Fay, the shopkeeper, shudders at the mention of the prime minister's name.
“What do I think about Gabriel Attal?” she said. “Only bad things.”
Fay says he’s aggressive and all about communication. Though she normally leans to the right, these days, she’s not thrilled about that end of the spectrum, either. When it comes to Attal’s latest propositions, she’s not convinced at all.
Attal is under pressure to find solutions to combat the country’s economic deficit, and recent propositions have almost unanimously fallen flat.
He’s advocating for more restrictive reforms on unemployment payments, which have already been reduced multiple times in recent years, and is floating the idea of raising taxes for certain income streams — notably income that doesn’t come from work, like payments from real estate assets, for example.
"It's not a reform of the economy, it's a reform of activity and prosperity," Attal said. "I take full responsibility. I was appointed to act. There will be a reform of unemployment insurance in 2024."
The unemployment reforms would make it harder for people to access benefits, along with other changes. Workers now need to hold a job for at least four months before getting unemployment; the new rules would bring that up to six.
Attal has said that the goal isn't to make things harder for the unemployed, but to get them working again.
"We've gone from 9.6% to 7.5% unemployment" since 2017, he said. "We didn't achieve this historic drop by magic. It's the fruit of our reforms, notably of unemployment insurance."
Another proposal includes raising taxing on companies, but exactly how this would play out remains ambiguous. Critics argue that there are other ways to combat the economic deficit that would be more effective.
“The money has to be found somewhere and fast,” Marlière said. “There is no talk about raising taxes for the very rich … . He’s [proposing] to make redundancy packages more difficult for unemployed people, so there’s a public at large which feel like it’s not fair to do that when there could be other ways of raising those funds to fight a deficit.”
Though all eyes are on the rise of the far-right — not only in France, but across Europe — and Attal is certainly making appeals to that side of the spectrum, Pasquier argues that the economy is his biggest issue right now, outweighing a shift in the political spectrum and even the upcoming European Parliament elections.
“I think the biggest challenge for Macron isn’t the European elections or that the majority will lose the European elections, what’s important for him is the economic slowdown and the social consequences with possibilities of strikes and demonstrations,” he said. “He’s caught between growing social discontent, the need to make budgetary cuts, and pressure from the right who wants the cuts to be greater than what he planned, so that's Attal’s main difficulty.”
Now, amid a slowing economy and tension in the government, the pressure is on for Attal to bring forth a solution that will appease everyone — an almost impossible feat — and the clock is ticking.
Follow @lilyradz
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
GOP sues Nevada over late mail-in ballots May 3, 2024
