June 21, 2017•Update: June 22, 2017
PARIS
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday approved Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s new Cabinet after four ministers quit the government.
Alexis Kohler, the Elysee secretary general, announced the Cabinet formed by the 46-year-old center-right politician Edouard Philippe.
Florence Parly, a former French railway and airline executive, has been appointed the new defense minister.
On Tuesday, Sylvie Goulard announced her resignation as defense minister, saying that her departure would help her to "freely demonstrate" her good faith in an investigation into allegations of misusing EU funds.
Nicole Belloubet, a member of the Constitutional Court, became justice minister after Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist Democracy Movement (MoDem), stepped down from the Cabinet post.
Gerard Collomb as interior minister, Nicolas Hulot as ecology minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian as Europe and foreign minister, and Bruno Le Maire as economy minister kept their seats.
Half of the new 28-member cabinet are women.
Earlier on Wednesday, Bayrou and Marielle de Sarnez, European affairs minister, quit the government over allegations of fake jobs for party assistants in the European Parliament.
Bayrou's party had formed an alliance with Macron's La Republique En Marche! (LREM) and played a pivotal part in the presidential election earlier this year as well as in the recent general elections.
Sarnez was among 19 French MEPs facing misconduct allegations over hiring assistants at the European Parliament.
These resignations come ahead of what was supposed to be a "technical reshuffle” following Sunday’s parliamentary elections which saw the LREM and its centrist MoDem ally win an overwhelming majority.
Macron's party has enough power in the National Assembly to form a government with its 308 lawmakers.
*Reporting by Murat Unlu; Writing by Handan Kazanci
