France has a new minister of culture. Who is Roselyne Bachelot

In France, the government of Jean Castex, the new prime minister who replaced Édouard Philippe, who resigned, has been born.The new formation, which has an axis leaning toward the center right, represents the third government of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. Replacing the culture minister, Franck Riester, comes a woman, Roselyne Bachelot. She is the eighth woman in the history of the French republic to hold the post.

Born Roselyne Narquin in Nevers in 1946, holding a doctorate in pharmacy obtained in 1988 from the University of Angers, a great lover of opera music, she has previously held positions at the same level: she was in fact minister of health and sports between 2007 and 2010 in the Fillon government (Sarkozy presidency), for the same government she was minister of solidarity and social cohesion until 2012, and before that, between 2002 and 2004, under the Raffarin-De Villepin government (Chirac presidency) she was minister of the environment. A longtime politician, she was also an MP as well as a member of the European Parliament. Before debuting in politics in the early 1980s, she worked as a researcher in pharmaceuticals.

For Roselyne Bachelot, her appointment as minister of culture represents a return to politics: when her experience in the Fillon government was over, she had in fact stepped away from politics and worked in television and radio as the host of several news programs on various stations. According to French media, Roselyne Bachelot’s is a surprise appointment, because her name had not been circulating in the toto-ministers and because a return to politics had been ruled out: “always there, stainless, an enthusiasm always intact,” comment in Le Monde Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, who remember her for her gaffes and outspokenness, while La Depeche recalls that the new minister had vowed to end her “nightmare” of politics and traces her career, and again Le Parisien points out that Bachelot has no connection with culture, beyond her passion for opera, and that a daunting challenge awaits her: “regaining the trust of the artistic milieu, which was very critical of her predecessor during the health crisis.”

In her first statements, Bachelot spoke of an “incredible opportunity”: “culture,” she commented shortly after her appointment, “is really something that can bring us together, that can give meaning to a society that is looking for its way.” And again, “when the president of the republic said that we have to find our way, he talked about economy, social, environment, and he put culture on the same level as these three areas. Here, then I cannot escape.” According to the new minister, the priority of his term is “to revive cultural places: festivals, museums, cinemas, historical monuments.”

France has a new minister of culture. Who is Roselyne Bachelot

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