Rachida Dati, the controversial Minister of Culture and emblem of the hard right in The Republicans, had all the tickets (or so she thought) to reach the Mayorship of Paris and undo all the legacy of Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor who had become her particular bane.
Daughter of an Algerian bricklayer and a Moroccan mother, the second of 11 siblings raised in poverty in Chalon-sur-Saône, Dati embraced the motto of "everything is possible for children in France through merit and effort." Politically groomed under Nicolas Sarkozy's shadow, she made history in 2007 as the first descendant of Muslim immigrants to hold a high position in the French government as Minister of Justice.
Fate has turned her story around, and now she will have to be the one to be held accountable before the French justice system for corruption and influence peddling. Rachida Dati has been accused of receiving 900,000 euros as legal advisor to Renault-Nissan during her time as a Member of the European Parliament between 2010 and 2012.
Her name is also linked to former Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who fled French and Japanese justice for tax fraud and is now in exile in Lebanon after a daring escape on a private plane. The trial date will be decided in September, when the verdict will also be announced against Sarkozy for the Libyan connection and the illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, in which Rachida Dati served as his spokesperson.
The appointment with justice will likely shatter Rachida Dati's political ambitions, as she was torn between the Mayorship of Paris and the second constituency of the capital for the legislative elections (a position also coveted by her moderate colleague Michel Barnier). Until last week, she emphasized repeatedly the "great opportunity for the right to win in Paris."
Dati currently serves as the President of the Seventh District, the most conservative in the capital (alongside the 16th), which has also been a launching pad for years. Despite the anticipated downfall by political analysts, the 59-year-old politician continues to cling to her positions and resist the growing pressure to resign.
In anticipation of the latest scandal, Rachida Dati had sought the spotlight with her proposal for audiovisual reform, approved by the Senate but blocked in the National Assembly. Her highly publicized political comeback in January 2024 as Minister of Culture in the government of Gabriel Attal (apparently through the mediation of Emmanuel Macron) surprised many, as she had long been pursued by suspicions, both for her ties to Sarkozy and her work as a lobbyist during her decade as a Member of the European Parliament (2009-2019).
Rachida Dati has been under investigation for conflicts of interest not only in the Renault-Nissan case but also for alleged payments from the energy company GDF-Suez. Despite calls for resignation, reignited by her audiovisual reform project being sabotaged by unions, the Minister of Culture has held onto her position in successive governments led by Michel Barnier and François Bayrou, although her days in the fragile center-right coalition may be numbered.
In 2020, Dati ran for Mayor of Paris against socialist Anne Hidalgo, who managed to retain her position. Following Hidalgo's announcement of not running for a third term in 2026, her perennial rival from the hard right had been positioning herself for months, questioning the ecological transition of the French capital championed by the socialist mayor. "Dati is like Donald Trump, a populist politician," Hidalgo recently commented to this newspaper: "She will never become mayor because she has many ethical issues in the closet."