Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin could well be forced to keep his position at the Interior Ministry despite his desires elsewhere.
The game of musical chairs. If the Prime Minister’s chair should, barring an earthquake, change tenants, everything remains to be done for other leaders of the majority, starting with the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. Weakened after the adoption of the immigration law, not without difficulty, the “first cop in France” could have desires elsewhere. If her name is circulating to replace Élisabeth Borne at the head of government, this hypothesis is not one of the most probable, far from it.
To know the future destination of Gérald Darmanin, we should perhaps turn to the Quai d’Orsay. Here, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna is in the hot seat. And it is said that the current Minister of the Interior would have desires elsewhere. According to Politico, a collaborator of Gérald Darmanin already wrote him a memo on “the functioning and the political advantages” of the Quai d’Orsay, some time ago. Enough to raise the rumor mill just a stone’s throw from a potential major reshuffle. As a reminder, after the last legislative elections and the incidents that occurred at the Stade de France around the Champions League final on May 28, 2022, the Minister of the Interior had already “expressed the wish” to go to the Quai d’ Orsay.
However, a decisive element could thwart his plans and force him to keep his position: the Olympic Games. Indeed, a change placing Beauvau a few months before the Olympics appears to be an extremely risky choice that Emmanuel Macron could completely decide to rule out, or to postpone. If such an upheaval were to occur, the most likely avenue to occupy Beauvau remains the current Paris police prefect, Laurent Nuñez, close to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games file.
