July 2022 French government reshuffle

On 4 July 2022, Emmanuel Macron carried out the first reshuffle of his minority government, led by Prime minister Élisabeth Borne, since the start of his second presidential term. As it is customary that the Prime minister offers the resignation of their government after a legislative election under the Fifth Republic,[1] a cabinet reshuffle was anticipated. However, the unexpected outcome of the June 2022 legislative election that saw President Macron's centrist coalition losing its majority in Parliament[2] changed the dynamics and nature of the reshuffle: falling 38 seats short of an overall majority in the National Assembly (from a 115-seat majority in the previous Parliament) and with 3 ministers (including 2 senior ones) having lost their seats, the cabinet had to undergo broader changes than expected.[3]

Emmanuel Macron

Élisabeth Borne

On 21 June 2022, two days after the second round of the legislative election, Prime minister Borne offered her government's resignation to the President but Macron refused it and instead asked the cabinet to "stay on task", a way to avoid a caretaking period that would have prevented ministers from taking important regulatory measures.[4]

Between 21 June and 4 July, both President Macron and his Prime minister held talks with parliamentary opposition leaders in order to try forming a stable majority government.[5] Nonetheless, since no opposition party showed interest in either supporting or entering a Macron-led government, the executive pair ultimately had to settle for a three-party minority coalition government.[6] Also, adding to the political disarray surrounding the imminent reshuffle, Overseas Minister Yaël Braun-Pivet resigned from government on 25 June to run as the presidential bloc's candidate for President of the National Assembly, leaving her ministerial portfolio to the PM to manage.[7]

Despite speculation about the scope of the reshuffle and reports of potential right-leaning appointments to the senior cabinet in a bid to bring the pivotal LR party closer to supporting the administration in Parliament,[8] the reshuffle was less far-reaching than expected. Despite adding two dozen new ministers,[9] few changes to the senior ministerial line-up were made and the new team's composition did not indicate any change of political direction as a result of the legislative election results. Brigitte Bourguignon, Health and Prevention Minister, and Amélie de Montchalin, Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion Minister, both resigned from cabinet after losing their seats in the election. Solidarity and Autonomy Minister Damien Abad, a former parliamentary LR leader, was sacked[10] after rape allegations against him emerged and tarnished the presidential coalition's campaign. In the end, the reshuffle was considered to have been used more as an opportunity to calibrate political imbalances between diverse factions inside the cabinet than as a way to broaden its parliamentary appeal in the context of a hung parliament.[11] Furthermore, multiple new junior-ministerial appointments were made and many figures with political experience during Macron's first term were promoted or even returned to government, as proven by Marlène Schiappa's appointment as State Secretary just a month after leaving the cabinet or Olivier Véran's appointment as the government spokesperson after being demoted in May. The new cabinet also included some new figures who were not career politicians, both in cabinet-level and in junior-ministerial jobs, as symbolized by the appointment of François Braun as Health and Prevention Minister.

Just after the reshuffle became effective, Véran, now acting as the government spokesperson, announced that the Prime Minister would not ask the National Assembly for a vote of confidence in her government and that the cabinet intended to govern on an ad hoc, bill-to-bill basis.[12]