Hollande began work today

Hollande to unveil cabinet after gender-equal pledge

5/16/2012 the legraphhe 

France's new prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault began work today as President Francois Hollande was set to unveil his entire government and keep his promise of dividing cabinet posts equally between men and women.

Mr Hollande is expected to choose Aurelie Filipetti, a 38-year-old up-and-comer in the Socialist Party, for culture minister, while spokesman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, 34, is likely to fill a junior post fighting discrimination.

The cabinet line-up could yet be changed after parliamentary elections next month depending on how well the Left fares and whether it needs to bring in coalition partners. Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy both placed plenty of women in their cabinets who later lost their jobs in reshuffles or when the president resorted to male cronies.

Mr Ayrault, a moderate who has led the Socialists in Parliament for more than a decade, speaks fluent German which will be considered an asset at a time when the relationships with Berlin will be all-important. He is however seen as even more mild mannered than the president, and takes his holidays in a VW camper van.

Mr Hollande, who flew to Germany to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel hours after being sworn in on Tuesday, is expected to opt for moderate social democrats in the key posts of finance and foreign affairs and a more old school Socialist in charge of a new super ministry for youth and education.

With anxiety high over Europe's debt crisis, Hollande is likely to pick longtime friend and campaign adviser Michel Sapin as finance minister, tasked with shrinking France's budget deficit and reversing a spiralling unemployment rate.

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Sapin, a moderate like Hollande himself, wants to move away from blanket austerity which he says risk plunging the euro zone into a deep recession, and introduce measures to stimulate growth.

There is less clarity on who will take over foreign affairs from outgoing minister Alain Juppe, with many betting that one-time European affairs minister Pierre Moscovici, 54, will be rewarded for managing Hollande's election campaign.

A graduate of the elite ENA school for civil servants, Moscovici has good command of English and enough clout to represent France on the world stage.

But he was a late convert to the Hollande camp, having long been a disciple of party heavyweight and former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and lacks the president's personability.

Another possibility is Laurent Fabius, who was prime minister at just 37 in 1984 under former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and served as finance minister for ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 2000-02.

Fabius has marks against him, having been dismissive of Hollande in the past and clashed with him in 2005 when he campaigned for a "no" vote in a referendum over a European Constitutional treaty that Hollande supported.

Asked whether he would be waiting anxiously by his phone to hear the news, Fabius answered with a dead-pan "No".