The Culture and Communication Advisor of the President of the Republic since December 2019 has been appointed rue de Valois on Friday.
Le Monde with AFP
Rima Abdul Malak, Emmanuel Macron culture advisor, was appointed, Friday, May 20, Minister of Culture to replace Roselyne Bachelot. At 75, the third Minister of Culture – after François Nyssen and Franck Riester – from the first five -year term Macron, who would have imagined continuing his function on rue de Valois, therefore gives way to Rima Abdul -Malak. The two women know each other well since the second had, since December 2019, the influential Culture and Media Councilor of Emmanuel Macron.
Very aware of the files in progress and accustomed to appointments, it is unknown to the general public but not from the cultural environment. This 44-year-old Franco-Lebanese, who spent the first ten years of her life in Lebanon before arriving in Lyon with her family, had already been expected in the summer of 2020 to succeed Franck Riester. But the President of the Republic had finally preferred the “media” Roselyne Bachelot rather than the “technocratic” profile of the former culture councilor of the socialist Bertrand Delanoë at the town hall of Paris.
“Minister Bis de la culture “
It was at the Parisian town hall that Rima Abdul-Malak began her political career. After having directed the humanitarian association Clowns Sans Frontières, which organized children’s shows in war areas, this graduate of the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Lyon, also holder of Development and International Cooperation of The Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne University, was appointed in 2007 at the head of the current music pole of the French Institute. A year later, she entered the town hall of Paris as a live performance counselor and then became chief of staff to Christophe Girard, culture assistant to the mayor of Paris, before joining the cabinet of Bertrand Delanoë. At the end of the latter’s second term, in 2014, Rima Abdul Malak went to the French Embassy in New York as cultural attaché. And it was in 2019 that she succeeded Claudia Ferrazzi as Culture and Communication Advisor of the Elysée.
The former Culture Consulting, often nicknamed “the Minister Bis de la Culture”, arrives in a convalescence sector. She knows the situation well for having worked on the battery of financial measures taken during the health crisis and organized, in May 2020, the media meeting in videoconferencing between Mr. Macron and artists to announce the implementation of the “White Year “For the intermittents of the show and encourage the cultural world to” bury the tiger “.
royalty and culture pass
In addition to the need to encourage the public to find the way to cultural places, several files await the new minister, at the forefront of which the project to abolish the audiovisual fee announced by Emmanuel Macron in early March, and promised this year . Even if the definition of the new mode of financing of public audiovisual will be decided in Bercy, it is Rima Abdul-Malak who will have to face the concerns that are already manifested at Radio France and France Télévisions.
The culture pass also appears to be the number of priorities that await Rima Abdul-Malak. A year after its generalization, this system in favor of access to young people to culture is always considered as a priority site for the new five -year term.