ORAL COMPREHENSION : French Government: everything has changed!

 

Audio transcription :

Today we're going to talk about a hot topic.

Monday 6 July 2020, the French government has changed!
There has been a cabinet reshuffle.
So you are probably wondering what this word means : ministerial reshuffle.

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In order to understand what ministerial reshuffle is, I will first explain how the French government works.
The functioning of the French government is not that complicated.
The French government is like a sports team.

In the French government, there is the President of the Republic.
It's like the coach.
He's the one who makes the big decisions and runs the government, the team.

Then there's the Prime Minister.
He's like the captain of the team, under the orders of the President he manages the team of ministers.

There are several ministers in the French government
Each minister deals with a social issue.
For example, there is the Minister of Education, the Minister of Justice or the Minister of the Environment.

What is the purpose of the French government?
The aim of the French government is to keep the promises that the President of the Republic made to the French people during his election campaign.
An election campaign is the period before the election. It is the promotion of a candidate and his government in the elections.
The government keeps its promises by proposing laws and reforms.

The President can decide to change the composition of his government.
He can change his team.
He decides whether he keeps a minister or replaces him with another minister.

And that's called cabinet reshuffling.

It is a partial or complete change in the composition of the government.

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So on July 6, 2020, that's what happened.
There was a cabinet shuffle.
The President decided to partially change the ministers in his government.
Several ministers left, others stayed.

One of the most important changes was the change of Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, who was replaced by Jean Castex.

Why did Emmanuel Macron make a cabinet reshuffle?
It would be a solution to deal with the post-coronavirus situation.
He would like to have a new team to face this challenge.

 

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