In a confirmation of his moniker as “president of the rich”, at least half of Emmanuel Macron’s government ministers are reportedly millionaires while a quarter are so wealthy as to be classed in the top one per cent of French society.
A study of the recently reshuffled government in France conducted by the leftist L’Humanité newspaper, which used financial disclosures through France’s High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) alongside other publicly available data, found that at least 17 of the 34 government ministers in Macron’s government are millionaires.
The report, according to Le Point, went on to find that at least two-thirds of Macron’s cabinet have assets of €716,000 (£610,000/$770,000) or more, putting them in the top ten per cent of French society, while at least 25 per cent of ministers would be classified as being part of the one per cent, with assets of at least €2.2 million (£1.9m/$2.4m).
Topping the cabinet rich list is foreign trade minister Franck Riester who boasts assets of €10 million (£8.5m/$10.7m) after inheriting a slew of car dealerships from his family. He was followed by Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, a former tennis player turned insurance executive, who has been tasked with overseeing the upcoming Paris Olympics this summer, with a personal wealth of €7m (£6m/$7.5m).
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who became France’s youngest PM and the first openly gay man to serve in the role after being installed by President Macron last month, is reported to have a net worth of around 1.5 million euros.
Attal replaced former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who had drawn the ire of the public after she used a constitutional loophole last year to raise the age of the state pension age without a vote in the National Assembly.
The anti-democratic move was seen as an attack on the working class who were just recovering from years of lockdown restrictions, which conversely benefitted the rich and big business. Immediately following the diktat, unions announced strikes and took to the streets in protests that lasted for months in defiance of the “president of the rich”.
The strikes and protests saw widespread disruption, with garbage collectors refusing to clear the streets of major cities and protesters using the growing piles of trash as kindling for fires.
The elitist government of Macron, who earned millions during his time as a Rothschild banker, has long faced working-class rebellions, with the first major uprising beginning in 2018 with the start of the Yellow Vest movement.
Named after the yellow safety vests French motorists are required to keep in their vehicles, hundreds of thousands protested for months against Macron’s attempts to impose hefty carbon taxes, which would have had a disproportionate impact on working-class people, notably those who use vehicles in their jobs or commute to work.
The latest protest against the globalist Macron government occurred over the past month, when thousands of farmers took to their tractors to shut down major motorways across the country against the green agenda of the EU and supported by Macron, which the farmers have claimed is destroying their ability to do business and maintain their way of life.
Farming and the green agenda as a whole are set to be a major issue in the upcoming EU Parliament elections in June. According to recent polling, the two main French populist parties, the National Rally and Reconquest — both of whom have backed the farmers — are on pace to gain a record number of votes and more than double Macron’s share.
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