With, always, a side "afraid of nothing", she hits, Marlène Schiappa.
At the end of the day, a prominent place in macronia.
"He is someone who has succeeded in establishing himself as one of the figures of the government by a capacity to surprise and to assume the controversy", applauds a minister.
The key also, tensions with several of his colleagues, controversies, setbacks.
So the week that has just passed.
She intended to start it off with a bang, with the surprise announcement of the launch of the Estates General of Secularism in the JDD.
She crossed it on a path of thorns.
"There, she got her feet caught in the carpet," says a macronist.
As soon as it started, the event was strongly criticized, especially for its casting. "A communication operation", storm its opponents, aiming to push its vision or its advantage "to continue to exist" (a Walker, dixit). “Yes, I sometimes make political moves to advance the issues. Is there one? No ”, denies Marlène Schiappa, taking in passing to recall that secularism appears in its decree of attribution and to deny the rumors about its“ rivalry ”with her colleague Jean-Michel Blanquer (National Education). In the background, the differences between the government and the majority on the subject. But also the bitter political battle over the future of the Observatory of secularism, which the minister has long wanted, with the backing of it, to see replaced.
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Marlène Schiappa, the government puncheuse
The manner, too, made the tenors of the majority cringe at their weekly Tuesday breakfast.
"She called everyone in the wake to demine," smiles a participant.
"It's Marlène Schiappa," sighs an LREM deputy.
High point, the echoes of the Council of Ministers on Wednesday - in which she did not participate - that some have since endeavored to temper, certifying that there was no reframing.
It remains that, according to several participants, the tone of the president was of a rare severity.
"A burst", blows an adviser to the executive, taped.
"It is not worth making umpteenth States General to repeat what Aristide Briand said, while I've already been telling you things 250 times", stung Emmanuel Macron, according to a witness at the scene : “It was very violent.
I don't know why he got upset like that.
But the fact is that Marlène sometimes takes too many liberties.
"
"The defects of his qualities"
The minister does not dismantle, far from it. “For the president, the urgency is not to organize debates with intellectuals, but to enforce the law and train agents. Maybe some have discovered his position. I am not surprised because I have spoken a lot with him on the subject. His line was: if you really want to do it, do it but also do the rest. So I do everything, and I assume everything, ”she replies. Afraid of nothing, then. She met the president at the Elysee Palace, when the first echoes flourished in the press. "We smiled, because he did not keep the words reported," she says.
But Marlène Schiappa's week is not over.
New controversy when the magazine “M, le Monde” came out, where the minister was full of praise for Cyril Hanouna, going so far as to estimate that he should co-host the presidential debate between two rounds in 2022. “For to interest young people ”, explains his cabinet.
New sighs internally.
"You have to be careful what you say ..." scolds a framework of the majority, nevertheless judging that "she still has a good rating, because she is one of the few ministers who print."
It has been so since the start of the five-year term.
"Very restless, very ambitious, very political", summarizes a faithful of Emmanuel Macron, with "the defects of his qualities".
Double-edged, therefore.
This week is proof of that.
