The French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, said yesterday he wanted his new, reshuffled government to move ahead with reforms that have floundered in recent months.
A second, unstated goal, is for the more combative "Jospin II" team to lead the left to victory in the 2001 municipal elections and legislative and presidential polls the following year.
Mr Jospin's choice as Finance and Economics Minister, the former prime minister, Mr Laurent Fabius, was the most important, reconciling the "socialist family" and signalling a shift towards lower taxes and more liberal economic policies.
But the appointment of the former culture minister, Mr Jack Lang, as Minister of Education was immediately dubbed "curious" and "baroque" by the rightwing opposition.
Mr Fabius and Mr Lang were loyal followers of the late president Mitterrand, and their return to government was hailed as a sign that Mr Jospin has made peace with the Mitterrandists he broke with 10 years ago.
Mr Fabius (53) is nine years younger than Mr Jospin, and competed with him for the leadership of the post-Mitterrand socialist party. After becoming France's youngest prime minister in 1984, Mr Fabius seemed to be winning. But the AIDS-tainted blood scandal blocked his career in the early 1990s, while Mr Jospin performed well as the socialists' presidential candidate in 1995, then led the party to power in 1997.
Mr Fabius was last year cleared of responsibility for transmitting AIDS to thousands of blood transfusion recipients.
In recent months he demanded reductions in the obligatory salary deductions that accounted for 45.7 per cent of the French payroll last year. At a socialist party council over the weekend, Mr Jospin sounded like Mr Fabius, promising to lower taxes for the middle classes as well as the poor.
Mr Lang was competing in a two-way race for the socialist nomination for the Paris mayor's office. His appointment as education minister yesterday leaves the socialist senator, Mr Bertrand Delanoe, as the socialists' candidate next year, probably in opposition to the popular Gaullist, Mr Philippe Seguin. The flamboyant Mr Lang was disliked by the Jospin camp, which preferred Mr Delanoe for the Paris town hall.
Mr Christian Sautter at finance was the only one of four outgoing ministers to resign, after only four months in office. The outgoing education minister, Mr Claude Allegre, was a close personal friend of Mr Jospin but was brought down by student, parent and teacher street demonstrations. The outgoing culture minister, Mrs Catherine Trautmann, was dubbed "the non-minister of culture" by the artistic community, and the former minister in charge of the civil service, Mr Emile Zuccarelli, failed to implement the 35-hour working week in the public sector.
Mr Jospin strengthened his claim to represent "the plural left" by giving the Greens and communists an additional junior minister's portfolio each.