Ex-publisher Francoise Nyssen sacked as France's culture minister

French culture minister Françoise Nyssen lost her job in a government reshuffle, following conflict of interest controversies, and has been succeeded by member of parliament Franck Riester.
 
Nyssen was one of several ministers appointed from civil society when President Emmanuel Macron was elected in May 2017. She was given a warm welcome to the corridors of power for having built up the Nîmes-based publisher Actes Sud into a house of international renown in the book business, and creating a local cultural life.  
 
But a number of setbacks followed in the subsequent 17 months. Nyssen was “weakened by controversies and a lack of charisma,” headlined the newspaper Le Monde after the announcement.
 
At the beginning of the summer, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé published the first of several articles alleging that Actes Sud had flouted urban development rules when extending their historic head office in Nîmes and offices in Paris. Nyssen acknowledged “negligence,” but that did not help restore credibility to a minister in charge of protecting the national heritage.
 
Tensions reached breaking point with authors over pension reform that would erode their mostly modest revenues, and in July, Nyssen was stripped of most of the book portfolio in order to avoid conflict of interest. Instead, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe became responsible for Actes Sud, the governmental National Book Centre (Centre National du Livre, CNL) and economic regulation for literary publishing.
 
Nyssen’s husband Jean-Paul Capitani has been running Actes Sud since his wife was appointed minister.
 
Riester (44) is a film and TV specialist and former member of the cultural affairs committee of the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly. He also helped steer the bill creating Hadopi, the authority for protecting digital intellectual property, through parliament.