FRANCE: Chaban's Return

• Share

And Giscard presents some not-so-new faces

In a masterly television address to the nation after the center-right's stunning electoral victory last month, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing vowed to take into account the desires of the 48.4% who had voted for the left. Specifically, he promised that his Cabinet would contain some new faces who would symbolize the need for social reform in France. But when Giscard unveiled his Cabinet last week, 25 of the 38 senior and junior ministers were old, familiar countenances.

Of the 20 senior ministers named by Giscard, 15 had sat in the previous government. Among those remaining in place: Premier Raymond Barre, who had been appointed the previous week; Justice Minister Alain Peyrefitte, author of the bestselling Le Mai Français (The French Sickness); Health Minister Simone Veil, whom polls have shown to be the most popular figure in French politics; Interior Minister Christian Bonnet, who has been widely praised for his department's skill in negotiating the release of kidnaped Belgian Baron Edouard-Jean Empain (TIME, April 10).

The five senior ministers who were not in the previous government scarcely qualified as fresh. The new Minister of Industry, for example, is André Giraud, 53, who has been chief of France's Atomic Energy Commission since 1970. Transportation Minister Joël Le Theule, 48, held a ministerial post under De Gaulle, while Culture and Communications Minister Jean-Philippe Lecat, 42, was a familiar figure at the Elysee Palace as Giscard's spokesman.

The most noteworthy changes in Giscard's new government involved structure rather than personalities. The powerful Finance Ministry, long criticized as a state within a state, was divided into two parts —budget and economy—just as the Socialists and Communists had advocated. Two moves reinforced Giscard's pledges of social reform. One was the creation of a large Ministry of Environment and Standard of Living. The other was the elevation of Health Minister Veil from 14th- to third-ranking member of the Cabinet, behind Barre and Peyrefitte. In all, Giscard's promised "opening" to the left looked to some critics more like an "opening to the past" (as the Communist daily L'Humanité put it).