French Culture Minister Rachida Dati said she will resign from her post to run for mayor of Paris in next month’s election. financial times in an interview Wednesday.
In 2024, Dati was appointed culture minister by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, becoming part of President Emmanuel Macron’s new centrist cabinet, following an election in which Macron swung to the right. Le MondeShe was scathing when she read of her tenure as culture minister, writing that it was “more a series of publicity stunts than a real achievement” and that she had “neglected live entertainment, failed to reform public broadcasting and stumbled over the Louvre”.
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Dati is a controversial figure in France, a member of La Repubblica, the center-right party founded by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, under whose leadership she served as spokesperson and justice minister. Dati subsequently served as a member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019.
In 2020, she ran for mayor of Paris against current Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the city’s first female mayor since 2014 and a member of the Socialist Party. This time, Dati will not run against Hidalgo, who announced last year that he would not seek re-election; the front-runner is Emmanuel Grégoire, another Socialist Party member with broad support on the left. Recent polls show Darty trailing Gregoire closely in the first round, with Darty leading in the second round of a two-way runoff.
When she was being interviewed financial timesDarty described her candidacy as an effort to “break the glass ceiling,” referring not to her status as a woman but as a minority. Dati, the daughter of Moroccan and Algerian parents, was the first Muslim woman to hold a major government position in France. As the newspaper noted, although Dati is a member of the Republican Party, she has largely disavowed the party’s anti-immigration rhetoric.
Still, Dati blasted the Socialist Party’s record. “Paris is very indebted, very dirty, crime has exploded… public spaces have become quite chaotic,” she told Le Parisien financial timesblaming their policies for an 8% decline in Paris’ population since 2012.
The Paris mayoral election will be held on March 15, with a runoff on March 22 if the candidate fails to obtain an absolute majority.
Dati’s candidacy also faces another hurdle: a criminal trial scheduled for September on charges of corruption during her tenure in the European Parliament. She allegedly received more than $1 million from carmaker Renault; she claimed it was for legal advice, but her accusers said it was for lobbying, which is illegal under EU rules.
As for Dati’s successor in the Ministry of Culture, deadlineAccording to veteran international film journalist Melanie Goodfellow, the leading candidate is Macron cultural adviser Catherine Pegarde, who also led the Palace of Versailles and served as head of cultural development at France’s AlUla Development Agency, which has helped Saudi Arabia develop the region but has also suffered some controversy.
