With six new Secretaries of State appointed on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron now brings the total number of ministers since the start of his five-year term to 69. This is already more than Nicolas Sarkozy in five years and François Hollande in the same period.

Six new Secretaries of State joined the government on Sunday evening, out of the 11 listed in the press release sent by the Élysée Palace (five were already members of Edouard Philippe’s team and had been on forced rest for three weeks). Altogether, the Castex government thus has 43 members: the Prime Minister, 16 ministers, 14 deputy ministers and 12 secretaries of state. This makes it the largest number of members since the third Jean-Pierre Raffarin government in 2004, which then had 44 members. We are here in the upper bracket of the governments under the Fifth Republic, which mostly sailed with around thirty members.

While this fresh team still respects gender parity (22 women and 21 men), Emmanuel Macron has made no improvements to his 2017 campaign promise to maintain “a government of 15 members maximum, very compact”. Except if we take into account only the ministers, those who attend the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, and ignore the other 26 members?

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Macron exceeds Sarkozy’s number of ministers in five years

Since the beginning of his mandate, which began three years and two months ago, Emmanuel Macron has already seen 69 members of the government. More than Nicolas Sarkozy in five years, since the latter had known 68 ministers, and as many as Georges Pompidou, who was president for four years and nine months until his death in April 1974. His predecessor François Hollande had 62 ministers at the same timeframe and ended his presidency with 74 people.

Hence, the Head of State is, for now, the most “consuming” of ministers under the Fifth Republic (see the box below). If it remains so, with no more appointments between now and May 2022, he would remain behind Jacques Chirac, François Hollande or François Mitterrand. Otherwise, Emmanuel Macron would break the historical record by appointing nine more people over the next two years, since with 78 members and an average ratio of 1.3 new ministers per month, he would eventually outpace Chirac. The former President had appointed 107 ministers in 83 months in office, stripping out the five out of 12 years of cohabitation during which the left had promoted other ministers.

The number of ministers per president under the Fifth Republic :

1. Emmanuel Macron (current term) – 69 ministers in 38 months: 1.82 ministers per month
2. Jacques Chirac – 107 ministers in 83 months*: 1.29
3. François Hollande – 74 ministers in 60 months: 1.23
4. Georges Pompidou – 69 ministers in 58 months: 1.19
5. François Mitterrand – 135 ministers in 116 months*: 1.16
6. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing – 96 ministers in 84 months: 1.14
7. Nicolas Sarkozy – 68 ministers in 60 months: 1.13
8. Charles de Gaulle – 87 ministers in 123 months: 0.71

* excluding the cohabitation period.