The career of Gérald Darmanin, one of Macronie’s historic take on the right, continues in government. The 39-year-old former interior minister, who is also a Renaissance candidate – the new name of La République en Marche – in the legislative elections in the North, returns as interior minister in the government formed by the Prime Minister. , Elisabeth Borne, Friday 20 May.

The one who was a deputy from the North entered the government after the election of Emmanuel Macron, in May 2017, as Minister of Action and Public Accounts. This will earn him an exclusion from the Les Républicains party. In this position, he led the reform of the tax deduction at source, implemented in early 2019.

He became Minister of the Interior in July 2020, in the new government formed by Jean Castex, and distinguished himself there as the security bridgehead of the executive, applying without complex the method of his mentor, Nicolas Sarkozy. An interview in Le Figaro points this out, in which he laments the “wildness” of society. He reestablished the policy of figures – renamed “result” – for certain missions of the police and found himself in the maneuver of the so-called law “against separatism”. In a few weeks, he published the national law enforcement plan and the White Paper on internal security, two structuring documents for law enforcement.

Accused of rape, a dismissal required

In 2021, Gérald Darmanin raised the media against him and the law on “global security”, article 24 of which provides for restricting the dissemination of images of the intervention of the police – which nevertheless constitutes one of the means, according to security policy watchdogs, of preventing or documenting cases of police violence. In May of the same year, he was present – ​​along with left-wing politicians – at a demonstration by police officers in front of the National Assembly, a mark of support much criticized by the opposition, while the rally was illustrated by the slogan “The problem with the police is justice”. His relations with the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, turn sour. Place Beauvau, Gérald Darmanin will also have had to manage, among other things, the death of at least twenty-seven migrants in the Channel and the issue of crack in Paris.

Faced with the demands of the police, but also with the distension of the link between the police and the population after cases of violence such as the beating of Michel Zecler, in November 2020, the Minister organizes the Beauvau de la sécurité during all year 2021. A few weeks before the presidential election, he takes stock of his action during the great oral of the candidates for the Elysee Palace organized by the police union Alliance. He argues in particular for increases in staff and budget (15 billion euros over five years), the modernization of equipment, vehicles – “two-thirds of the fleet have been changed” – to individual telephones through cameras and uniforms, but also the strengthening of initial and continuous training.

Gérald Darmanin was investigated for rape, after Sophie Patterson-Spatz accused him of promising her a “service” in exchange for sexual favors, in 2009. In 2018, a “restraining order place to inform” considered that the preliminary investigation allowed the charges to be dismissed. In June 2020, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered the resumption of investigations. In January 2022, the Paris prosecutor’s office requested a dismissal in this case. Another investigation opened against Mr. Darmanin for “abuse of weakness”, after a woman said she “felt obliged” to have sex with him, was dismissed.