Deputy Prime Minister of France

The deputy prime minister of France is a position which existed at times in the government of France between 1871 and 1958. It was titled vice president of the Council of Ministers (vice-président du Conseil des ministres), or vice president of the Council for short.

It was in itself a sinecure, used to grant seniority immediately after the prime minister to one important member of the government, later up to three at the same time, but without specific duty or power, or any role as designated acting prime minister. However, in 1871–1876 and 1940–1942, it was actually used for the de facto prime minister, as the position was nominally held by the head of state.

As deputy
The position of deputy prime minister existed only occasionally during the Third Republic (1870–1940, starting only in the 1910s), the Provisional Government of the French Republic (1944–1946), and the Fourth Republic (1946–1958).

As for all other members of the government, the appointment, or removal, was formally by the head of state, but bowing to the decision of the prime minister.

Although it implied a role of deputy head of government, the position was in itself a sinecure, which brought seniority right after the prime minister (president of the Council), but came without any specific duty or power unless arranged by separate decisions, or any role as designated acting prime minister. The holder sometimes concurrently served as minister for a specific government department, as did the prime minister at the end of the Third Republic, but was otherwise a top-ranking minister without portfolio, with informal responsibilities. A responsibility was however directly assigned to the vice presidency on two occasions, in 1938–1940 when Camille Chautemps was put in charge of coordination of the recently established Office of the Prime Minister, and in 1951 when Guy Mollet was in charge of the Council of Europe. There was initially only one holder at a time, while a position of minister of state, which ranked higher than ordinary ministers, could be granted to several members, also with or without portfolio; there were however up to three vice presidencies in later governments.

Depending on the political situation, it could reflect the personal standing of the holder, especially if he was a former prime minister, or his role as leader or representative of an important party of the government combination, especially for the two junior parties of the tripartisme in 1946–1947. Positions of minister of state were already used for the same purpose since the 19th century; deputy prime ministers ranked above these when both existed at the same time, making it possible for the prime minister to draw up a subtle order of seniority.

The first holder was Aristide Briand in 1914, chosen at the start of World War I by René Viviani; as the government had partially transferred from Paris to Bordeaux, this enabled him to deputize for Vivani, or for the foreign and war ministers, when they came and went between the two cities. Viviani was also the first prime minister not holding a specific portfolio in order to concentrate on the coordination of an expanding state apparatus. The last was Guy Mollet in 1958.

An equivalent position had also existed in a provisional government, the Government of National Defence (1870–1871), which had a vice president (vice-président du Gouvernement de la défense nationale).

As head of government
In two short periods, the title was however used for the de facto head of government himself, because the head of state formally held the position of prime minister as well.

In 1871, for lack of a permanent constitution, Adolphe Thiers was installed as chief executive of the French Republic in February; while the Rivet Law granted him the title of president of the Republic in August, this was in compensation for a restriction of his powers by the National Assembly, under which ministers were made responsible to the assembly. As he wanted to maintain a direct involvement in government business and kept the additional position of prime minister, the minister to whom he delegated the leadership of the quasi-national government formed in February on 2 September, the minister of justice Jules Armand Dufaure, received the title of vice president of the Council. His successor Patrice de MacMahon left a larger degree of autonomy to his deputy. After republicans won the 1876 legislative election, MacMahon, a monarchist, accepted to appoint a republican ministry, but on 9 March transferred the title of president of the Council to its leader, Dufaure again, in order to stress that he took no responsibility for it. In his government statement, Dufaure defined his new position by declaring that he had been “chosen by the President of the Republic to exercise in his name the powers conferred on him by the Constitution”.

At the start of the Vichy Regime (1940–1944), Philippe Pétain, the last prime minister of the Third Republic who proclaimed himself head of the French State, made Pierre Laval the leading minister when he re-appointed him as his deputy. Pétain dismissed and replaced Laval a few months later, but he was eventually forced by the German occupation authorities to recall him with increased prerogatives in April 1942, upon which he granted him the title of head of the Government (chef du gouvernement), even though he himself nominally kept the title of president of the Council.

Earlier and later systems


The meetings of the Council of Ministers have always been chaired by the head of state (emperor, king, president); when the role of head of government emerged in the late 1810s under the Restoration, the title of “president” of that body came to be used, because it included the responsibility to prepare the agenda and the business to be dealt with. This was however only by convention, and the position or title of head of government had no legal existence until the 1870s; some other ministers were informally considered second-in-command, but were not commonly called vice president.

During the Second Empire (1852–1870), the position of prime minister had been pointedly abolished by Napoleon III, who led government business in person, but the minister of state, who was ranked first and was close to the Emperor, came to be seen as the primus inter pares, especially when speaking in the name of the Emperor in important parliamentary business.

Although the position of prime minister came in legal existence when it re-emerged in the 1870s, the office did not appear in a French constitution before 1946; that of deputy never did.

The position of deputy prime minister (potentially vice-Premier ministre) has never been granted under the Fifth Republic (1958–present). The Constitution simply provides that the prime minister “may delegate certain of his powers to ministers” (article 21). Nicolas Hulot, who served as minister for the ecological and solidary transition with the rank of minister of state in the first year of Emmanuel Macron's presidency, had long publicly called for a position of deputy prime minister in charge of the environment, and said that Macron had considered his elevation, but determined that it would be “not constitutional”.