Guillaume Kasbarian, the Minister of the Civil Service, sparks controversy together with his tweet of congratulations to Elon Musk | EUROtoday

Guillaume Kasbarian already designates him as his “homologous”. In a rush, maybe even enthusiastic, the French Minister of the Civil Service welcomed with a tweet, Wednesday November 13, the announcement of the appointment of Elon Musk on the head of a future ministry of “governmental effectivity “. The richest man in the world is tasked by Donald Trump, the newly elected American president whose campaign he financed part of, to “dismantle government bureaucracy”.

“Congratulations on accepting this awesome challenge @elonmusk! I look forward to sharing with you best practices for combatting excess bureaucracy, reducing paperwork, and rethinking public organizations to improve the effectiveness of public officials,” rants Guillaume Kasbarian on X, in English.

While Europe is frightened by the “ totally uninhibited agenda » of Donald Trump, in the words of Emmanuel Macron, the minister’s message without much restraint makes part of the political class shudder. Does the thirty-year-old embody the risk of “Trumpization of French political life” what does the historian Vincent Martigny point out?

“We thought that Trumpism in France was limited to the far right. We were wrong. We have G. Kasbarian, the French Elon Musk without electricity »scathes the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, on the social network, while within the macronie, the left wing struggles to hide its embarrassment. “I didn’t understand that we had the same agenda as Elon Musk”quips the former Paris deputy, Clément Beaune.

“At Matignon, they didn’t laugh at all”

Guillaume Kasbarian’s remarks, capable of poisoning the social climate of the country, were not to Matignon’s taste. At the end of the council of ministers, the government spokesperson, Maud Bregeon, tried to delay. “My colleague Guillaume has been extremely mobilized for years on the need to simplify and debureaucratize the French administration. He congratulated his counterpart and that’s it.”she assured.

“At Matignon, they didn’t laugh at this tweet at all”she had observed, in private, to a Renaissance elected official. “ Welcoming the appointment of a counterpart, whose executive was democratically elected, does not constitute membership,” we say in Guillaume Kasbarian’s entourage.

The author of the anti-squat law, recognizable by his handlebar mustache, assumes his liberal positions. Former consultant, nicknamed the “cost-killer” for the savings he intends to reap by simplifying the French administration, Guillaume Kasbarian was not the only one to applaud the new functions of the South African billionaire. “ An anti-bureaucratic ax committee, I dreamed of it and @elonmusk is going to do it! “, writes on X the previous presidential candidate for the Republicans (LR), Valérie Pécresse. “Minister Kasbarian is falling into anti-civil service populism”concludes Sacha Houlié, deputy for Vienne and former Macronist.