Emmanuel Macron had chosen a left profile – Olivier Véran – to take care of the very strategic, but little media, Ministry of Relations with Parliament. After the fiasco of the legislative elections and the need to caress the elected LR to pass the texts to the Assembly, it is therefore a profile … of the right that the head of state has chosen. Franck Riester, 48, until then Minister of Foreign Trade, arrives at the Hôtel de Clermont in an explosive political context.
Elected four times deputy without interruption since 2007, formerly a member of the UMP then of the Republicans, the one who then created the Agir party (right wing of the majority) knows Parliament well. He several times had to carry sensitive texts when he was a deputy – he was rapporteur for the Hadopi bill – and Minister of Culture at the very beginning of the previous five-year term. His affable, calm demeanor and his “politically rounder” profile, it is said, will necessarily be his assets in seeking an absolute majority on a case-by-case basis. “Its smooth and mat side could have been a defect in some previous functions, there it can clearly be an asset”, observes an adviser.
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“I am a man of dialogue, of listening, which allows us to work in search of compromise”, he confides to us, while assuring that he wants to “work in transparency”. “Nothing will be taken by giving the impression of small agreements between friends made behind the backs of the French. On the contrary, it will be necessary to explain what is happening, to do pedagogy around the texts that we will manage to have adopted, ”he insists.
In a boiling hemicycle, some in the government were also worried about seeing Olivier Véran kept in office. “We had to start from scratch with the oppositions, because Olivier had a history with a few elected officials which dates back to the time when he was Minister of Health, during the examination of health texts. This could have compromised future discussions, ”deciphers a pillar of the majority.