“What is En Marche?” They are traitors from the left and traitors from the right,” said Rachida Dati on France Inter in June 2021. The fact remains that the new Minister of Culture is turning her back this Thursday on the Republicans and, by joining Emmanuel Macron, she is following in the footsteps other party colleagues like Edouard Philippe, Bruno Le Maire or Gérald Darmanin. And this, two years before the municipal elections. The mayor of the 7th arrondissement, who aims to conquer Paris, herself announced her surprise appointment on rue de Valois to Parisian LR elected officials, before formalization by the Elysée.
The new Minister of Culture is not afraid of shocking formulas. In politics, “she has a combative character, she is determined,” notes a former collaborator. “Objectively, we can say that she’s going for it. The question is whether she sees a wall or not,” he adds to summarize the 58-year-old lawyer, daughter of a Moroccan mason and an Algerian stay-at-home mother, propelled to the forefront by Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy, Carlos Ghosn and Simone Veil
If the former president paid tribute to his “inexhaustible energy”, the strong character of the former Minister of Justice did not only attract him friendships – “she has her moods”, diplomatically sums up an elected official. Rachida Dati is “a woman of commitment, of energy, who all her life fought to obtain what she wanted to obtain”, greeted Gabriel Attal, this Thursday evening on TF1. And the new Prime Minister highlighted the “presumption of innocence”, while the Parisian elected official has been indicted since July 2021 for “corruption” and “passive influence peddling by a person invested with a public elective mandate » in the investigation into contracts entered into by a subsidiary of Renault-Nissan, when Carlos Ghosn was its CEO. Rachida Dati denies any irregularity.
His name is also cited in an investigation into accusations of kidnapping, sequestration and torture of a Franco-Algerian lobbyist, which notably target PSG boss Nasser Al-Khelaïfi. The town hall of the 7th arrondissement was searched in this case at the end of June 2023.
Born on November 27, 1965, the new Minister of Culture from a family of 12 children and raised in an HLM in Chalon-sur-Saône, has never hidden her ambition. Her family, like her mentors Albin Chalandon or Simone Veil, paint the portrait of a young woman paying for her studies through work (supermarket saleswoman, caregiver, etc.) and knocking with nerve on the most prestigious doors to land internships or jobs.
Rachida Dati vs Anne Hidalgo
Brooded by Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom she was advisor and campaign spokesperson, she emerged from the shadows through the front door in May 2007 by accessing, at the age of 41, the post of Minister of Justice (until 2009). If she takes down her wax statue at the Grévin museum, her character and her methods earn her the hostility of the legal world, to the point of exasperation of collaborators who end up resigning. Her appearances in celebrity magazines, her well-publicized pregnancy – until her return to the ministry, five days after giving birth – also irritate.
Pushed against her will in the spring of 2009 into the European campaign, she was elected MP in Strasbourg but did not hide her boredom: “I have to stay there, act smart,” she sighs. Then, elected mayor of the 7th arrondissement in 2008, she remained a little out of the spotlight until launching the race for mayor of Paris.
Pugnacious but divisive, symbol of diversity, Rachida Dati maintains a downright stormy relationship with the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo. It must be said that the former MEP failed as head of the LR list in the 2020 municipal elections against Anne Hidalgo. And the latter remains its preferred target, as after its recent trip to French Polynesia which caused controversy. An Anne Hidalgo who immediately reacted after her nomination: “I wish good luck to the actors in the world of culture given the trials they will go through. »