Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal named a smaller cabinet on Thursday that retained well-known heavyweights at four of the main ministries, including economy and finance.
The reshuffle comes only days after Macron picked Attal, his 34-year-old protégé who had been serving as education minister, to become France’s youngest prime minister. It represents a bet that Attal’s energy and popularity will reboot the president’s problem-plagued second term and blunt the rising threat of the far-right ahead of European parliamentary elections.
“I want action, action and action, and results, results and results,” said Attal on TF1 news channel, promising his team would work tirelessly to “answer the needs of the French public”.