In Jean-Yves Le Drian's departure, a heavyweight has left the French the government, on Friday, May 20. He was replaced by Catherine Colonna. A key figure of the Parti Socialiste until he left it in 2018, Mr. Le Drian could boast that he stayed in government under both François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, spending five years at the Defense Ministry and as long at the Foreign Ministry.
He spent ten years forging French influence across the world. The former mayor of Lorient and held a leading position for the entire cycle of the French intervention in Mali, from the launch of Operation Serval in January 2013 to the announcement of France's from the territory, in the face of the rejection from the military junta in power in Bamako, in February of this year.
His last year at the Foreig Ministry was marked by Australia's cancelation of a purchase of 12 nuclear submarines from France, and by the creation behind France's back of a new strategic partnership between Canberra, Washington and London in the Indo-Pacific region. "Today we are on the road to restoring trust with the United States, even though we are not yet at the end of it," Jean-Yves Le Drian told Le Monde in November 2021.
An influential figure in Brittany
Since the beginning of 2022, the war launched by Moscow in Ukraine has occupied a large part of French diplomatic activity, with Mr. Macron playing the leading role in exchanging with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.
The division of labor has reflected the first five years of Mr. Macron's presidency, during which the Elysée often took the lead on diplomatic issues ahead of the Foreign Ministry. The reform of the senior diplomatic hierarchy, on which Jean-Yves Le Drian has expressed reservations, was the president's idea. It has triggered, a rare call to strike from the ministry's staff.
Regarding Syria, Mr. Le Drian, 74, always showed firmness towards French jihadists, excluding any repatriation of adults currently detained in northeastern Syria, and advocating for a case-by-case approach for the children of French citizens detained in Syria.
The former president of the regional council of Brittany sometimes had a hard time smoothing the edges of the "disruptions" wished for by the president. He was hard at work, at the end of 2021, to reconcile France with Algeria, after Emmanuel Macron had questioned the existence of "the Algerian nation (...) before French colonization."
Always busy with international news, the minister nevertheless took time to support Emmanuel Macron in his re-election campaign. The left-wing electorate "recogniwes itself" in the president, he claimed in January. In February, taking a sharper position against his former party, he said that "the Parti Socialiste is unfortunately closer to burial than to resurrection."