Do we like them?Do we like Gabriel Attal?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A visible first for gay representation, but the abaya ban and the hardened migration pitch keep him out of the top end.
Gabriel Attal became France's youngest-ever prime minister in January 2024, and the first openly gay one. He was 34 when Emmanuel Macron picked him, after a quick climb through Macron's party and cabinet, ending up in the education portfolio first.
The row sits in that education job. In 2023 he announced a ban on girls wearing the abaya in state schools, framing it as secularism. Dozens of girls were sent home when they refused to change, the left accused him of turning school staff into clothing police, and critics argued he was courting right-wing voters. A poll cited by NPR found most French people backed it, so where you land depends on whether you read it as secularism or as targeting Muslim girls.
On the harm check, nothing in what we could find shows him campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people. At his first big speech to lawmakers as PM he said French “mindsets are evolving” on LGBTQ issues. The mark against him is policy, not slurs: the abaya ban and, more recently, a campaign pitch to favour labour migration over family reunification, which Radio France said split the Macron camp. We couldn't open the articles on his full voting record, so treat this as a partial check.
The recent news is the 2027 race. He declared his candidacy in May at a public meeting in a village in Aveyron, as the second centrist contender against the far right, and has said he would not ally with the conservative Republicans if they go for a union of the right and the far right. Some papers also reported he set himself apart from Macron over the snap dissolution.
In August he filed a complaint over what his lawyers called foreign interference from Russian networks, and Paris prosecutors then opened their own probe into suspected Russian meddling that covers him and fellow contender Edouard Philippe. Reports describe deepfakes and false claims about politicians. This is abuse aimed at him and others, so it counts for nothing against him either way.
On the good stuff, the honest answer is that we couldn't open enough pages to list charity or personal kindness. What's clear is that his rise as an openly gay leader of a major country mattered to a lot of LGBTQ+ people, and he has been open about it without making it his whole brand.