The Minister of Higher Education Sylvie Retailleau presented her resignation on Wednesday to Emmanuel Macron, due to a “deep disagreement” on the measures concerning students in the immigration law, but she was refused, announced her entourage to AFP on Thursday. This resignation presented on the sidelines of the council of ministers “was refused” and the minister will remain “in post”, specified the same source. The same day, the Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau left the government irrevocably, also in disagreement with this law.
President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “assured the minister that the measures concerning students” in this law “would be revised if they were not censored by the Constitutional Council”. Sylvie Retailleau therefore received the guarantees she wanted, while the president himself disagrees with this measure.
Renewed confidence
Emmanuel Macron judged Wednesday evening in the show C to you, on France 5, that this deposit requested for foreign students was “not a good idea”, but that the provisions which did not please “did not justify blocking everything”. After the adoption of this controversial law, with the voices of the right and the far right, Sylvie Retailleau had “reminded the Prime Minister of her deep disagreement on the measures concerning students”, according to her office, then she heard the “doubts” expressed on this subject by Elisabeth Borne on France Inter on Wednesday morning.
According to Sylvie Retailleau’s entourage, the president and the Prime Minister “consider that this is a measure that does not suit them.” On the occasion of the presentation of his resignation, they “indicated to him that the president wanted to talk about it” on France 5 the same evening. “The president and the Prime Minister refused the resignation by renewing their confidence in him to carry out the projects of the future,” added the same source.
Fight against youth precariousness
Other ministers have expressed their unease after the adoption of the immigration law. Physicist Sylvie Retailleau, 58, was new to politics when she became Minister of Higher Education and Research in May 2022 after heading the prestigious Paris-Saclay University. She succeeded in this ministry from Frédérique Vidal, another academic. She is notably in charge of Parcoursup, the often contested post-baccalaureate guidance tool, and her main battle is to upgrade student scholarships, to fight against the precariousness of young people.
Emmanuel Macron also recently charged her with reforming the French public research landscape. Originally from Nice, Sylvie Retailleau – wife of Stéphane Retailleau, professor – is a specialist in the laws of physics. He is a leader in his field. She led a career in higher education where she began as a lecturer in 1992 at the University of Paris-Sud, now Paris-Saclay. In March 2020, she was elected president of this newly created university.