President Nicolas Sarkozy reshuffled his cabinet on Tuesday after losing a key minister in a parliamentary election and made former international lawyer Christine Lagarde France's first female economy minister.
Just a month after naming his team, Sarkozy switched the previous economy chief Jean-Louis Borloo to run a new energy and environment mega-ministry in place of Alain Juppe who quit the government after losing his constituency in Sunday's poll.
"You can't refuse an offer like that," Borloo was quoted as saying by the daily Le Parisien ahead of the announcement. Borloo becomes de facto deputy to Prime Minister Francois Fillon, even though some on the centre-right blame his unguarded comments on a possible value-added tax hike for their smaller-than-expected majority in the weekend election. Lagarde entered politics in 2005 as trade minister in the previous conservative administration and her assured handling of the brief meant she was given the tricky farms portfolio last month when Sarkozy unveiled his administration.