Laurent Fabius, 65, a veteran heavyweight of the French Socialist party, has been appointed Wednesday Foreign Minister in France’s new government under President Francois Hollande.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault's government includes a mix of Socialist party stalwarts and ambitious young party members.
Fabius, whose father is a Jewish art dealer, had been Prime Minister under President Francois Mitterrand, after serving as budget and industry minister. In 2000, he became Finance Minister under former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
Ayrault, the former leader of the Socialist group at the Parliament, was appointed by President Francois Hollande on Tuesday immediately after his inauguration.
Pierre Moscovici, 54, who led Hollande's presidential election campaign, became Finance Minister. He was a junior European affairs minister in the 1997-2002 left-wing government that shared power with conservative President Jacques Chirac. He has also been a member of the European Parliament.
He was a late convert to the Hollande camp, having initially backed Dominique Strauss-Kahn to run for president until the then IMF chief was arrested in New York last May on charges, later dropped, of attempted rape.
A graduate of the elite ENA school for civil servants and the son of Jewish French-Romanian intellectuals, Moscovici joined the Socialist Party in 1984 after a youthful stint as a Trotskyist, and soon rose to become the party's youngest national secretary.

EJP