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Franck Riester, his missed meeting with culture

2020-07-08T12:42:37.486Z


In October 2018, he succeeded the editor Françoise Nyssen. Despite a five billion euro aid plan for culture and the media and the granting of a clean year to intermittent workers, it has not succeeded in breaking the curse which strikes street tenants from Valois.


When he arrived on rue de Valois, he presented the image of a good soldier who was supposed to reform public broadcasting and cultural policy. But faced with an ultra-present president, Franck Riester did not convince more than his predecessors.

Read also: Roselyne Bachelot in Culture: Jack Lang calls for a revolution on rue de Valois

Appointed in October 2018, the 46-year-old minister was supposed to save the cabinet from the "shipwreck" Françoise Nyssen, who left after just 17 months in this post which has seen 12 ministers succeed each other since Jack Lang, without printing their style and with a mandate only not exceeding on average two years. Now responsible for foreign trade and attractiveness, he himself mentioned during his handover with Roselyne Bachelot the "curse of seeing the holder of this ministry change every 18 months" on average.

Read also: Reshuffle: the French approve the Castex government but do not expect much

Reputed to be discreet, hardworking and attentive, Mr. Riester had marked the return of politics to the ministry, Nyssen coming from publishing. But he was criticized for late appointments, a Culture Pass - cultural priority of Emmanuel Macron's mandate - which never took off, a project to reform the public audiovisual sector suspended, and for not having lived up to it during the coronavirus crisis, faced with a disaster scene. Despite a five billion euro aid plan for culture and the media and the granting of a clean year to intermittent workers, he emerged weakened.

Made of the prince?

A year ago, several unions were already worried about the "lack of political ambition" of his cabinet. He was overtaken on several occasions by Emmanuel Macron, as when the president entrusted General Jean-Louis Georgelin with the mission of piloting the reconstruction of Notre-Dame.

The appointment of a future director of the Paris Opera becomes a saga over several months before Mr. Macron talks for 45 minutes with Alexander Neef, the lucky winner. Other late nominations bear the mark of Macron: that of the National Cinema Center, attributed to a controversial Dominique Boutonnat, of the Palais de Tokyo or the Villa Medici after 18 months of rumors. Several directors of cultural establishments are appointed, including Emilie Delorme, the first woman to direct the Conservatoire de Paris since its creation in the 18th century. But the non-appointment of a woman at the head of the new National Center for Music caused a stir, Catherine Ruggeri having been dismissed in favor of Jean-Philippe Thiellay.

At the start of the coronavirus crisis, diagnosed positive for Covid-19 with 40 degrees of fever for two weeks, he received no indulgence. A column in Le Monde, May 1, signed by Catherine Deneuve or Isabelle Huppert calls Macron to save culture, tackling Franck Riester in passing. On May 6, an image was commented on during Macron's speech: that of a silent minister, taking notes, alongside a president with sleeves rolled up, calling on artists to “reinvent themselves” . Marking, however, a victory for the intermittent, the episode highlights for its detractors the image of an impotent minister.

Small annoying phrases, such as the possibility of holding "small festivals" , when the live performance is reeling from the cancellation of major summer festivals. Announcements escape him, like that by Philippe de Villiers on the reopening of Puy du Fou thanks to Macron's agreement, the press shouting "the prince's act" . After the deconfinement, the stars continue to attack the minister, a graduate of business schools, a car dealer who joined the National Assembly in 2007 and who had created his own party, "Agir".

"We did not hear much, he did not really appreciate the gravity of this crisis," laments actor Richard Berry. He is hampered by the timing: the long-awaited reform project of the public audiovisual sector, in which he pleads for a French BBC, was about to be adopted when the Covid-19 struck. And the Culture Pass, supposed to facilitate young people's access to culture, seems eternally in the experimentation phase.

Franck Riester, re-elected mayor of his hometown of Coulommiers, had been noticed as rapporteur in 2009 of the two draft laws on literary and artistic property on the internet. "If you communicate without content to deliver, you are quickly zapped," he said shortly after arriving at the ministry. He was thanked 20 months later.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-07-08

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