Who is France's youngest ever prime minister Gabriel Attal?
rfi.frsaid Joël Deumier, co-president of the non-profit SOS Homophobie. Attal is the son of Yves Attal, a successful lawyer and film producer of Tunisian Jewish descent.
He grew up in Paris and attended the prestigious Ecole Alsacienne private school.Attal took an early interest in politics, joining student protests in 2006 to get the then conservative government to drop its unpopular First Job Contract (CPE).
He graduated from SciencesPo university with a masters in public affairs, though his career has been largely confined to the political sphere.Attal has enjoyed a meteoric rise, going from intern to PM in just over a decade.He joined the Socialist Party in 2006 and after a stint of work experience under Socialist health minister Marisol Touraine in 2012, he secured a full-time post at the Health Ministry at just 23.He was elected to the town council of Vanves, near Paris, two years later.In 2016 Attal quit the Socialist Party to join Macron's centrist political movement En Marche! – later renamed La République En Marche, and then Renaissance – where he threw his energy into getting the former banker and political outsider into the Elysée.When Macron was elected in 2017, Attal won a place in a select group of articulate, well-educated young men charged with advising and supporting the young president.
He has remained a close and loyal ally ever since.Attal won a seat in the 2017 legislative elections and was the youngest politician to hold a government post when, aged 29, he was named secretary of state at the Education Ministry.Subsequent posts include public accounts minister and most recently education minister, where he introduced a school ban on the wearing of abayas – a dress worn by some Muslim girls.
