French PM resigns; Macron names senior official Jean Castex as new successor

Paris: France is to name a new prime minister in the coming hours," the country's presidency said Friday, shortly after announcing Edouard Philippe's resignation amid an expected reshuffle.

The new French prime minister Jean Castex is a low-profile civil servant and local politician from the right, who recently gained prominence for drawing up policy to ease the Coronavirus lockdown.

For supporters, Castex is a hugely impressive bureaucrat who will rapidly master the brief of prime minister and handling relations with President Emmanuel Macron, who sits atop a presidential system where the premier is very much number two.

But detractors have already rubbished the appointment, asking why Macron has bothered to replace Edouard Philippe, also a right-winger who has served for three years, with more of the same.

Castex, 55, mayor of Prades, a small town in the southern Pyrenees mountains, is no stranger to the corridors of power since his time as an advisor to ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

"A senior civil servant who knows the health world perfectly well and who is impressively efficient," said the now former premier Philippe when Castex was nominated to design the easing of the Coronavirus lockdown.

Castex was twice chief of staff for Xavier Bertrand, who was health minister and then labour minister under the presidencies of Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy.

At the time Castex had to deal with a number of sensitive cases, such as a pension reform and a law that forced strikers in the transport sector to provide a minimum service.

France's gradual easing of the lockdown has been regarded largely as a success, with life returning to normal across the country but with no sign of the feared "second wave" yet.

President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to open a new chapter for the two remaining years of his term that will focus on efforts to relaunch the French economy deeply hit by the Coronavirus crisis.

In an interview given to several local newspapers on Thursday, Macron said he is seeking a new path to rebuild the country.

He praised Philippe's outstanding work in the past three years. I will need to make choices to lead (the country) down the path, he said.

The reshuffle comes days after a green wave swept over France in local elections. Macron saw his young centrist party being defeated in France's biggest cities and failing to plant local roots across the country.

The reshuffle was planned even before the voting, as Macron's government faced obstacles and criticism before Sunday's election and during the virus crisis.

As the pandemic was peaking in the country in March and April, authorities came under fire for the lack of masks, tests and medical equipment.

Before that, Macron's pro-business policies, widely seen as favouring the wealthier, had been hampered by the yellow vest economic movement against perceived social injustice.

This winter, weeks of strikes and street demonstrations against a planned pension overhaul disrupted the

country.