French President Emmanuel Macron will meet with Bernard Cazeneuve on Monday amid speculation that the last prime minister under François Hollande could be appointed to lead a new government. The meeting, which has not yet been officially announced by the Elysee Palace, will take place in the morning and was confirmed by sources close to Cazeneuve to several media outlets, including the TF1 television network.
The meeting adds to the solidity of the rumor that Cazeneuve will be chosen by Macron to succeed Macronist Gabriel Attal as prime minister, who resigned 50 days ago in response to the results of the early legislative elections of June 30 and July 7. The candidacy of this 61-year-old politician and lawyer to return to the Matignon Palace emerged strongly after Macron refused to nominate the candidate proposed by the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition, Lucie Castets.
The former Prime Minister of President François Hollande (2016-2017) is, according to leaks from the Elysée to the press, the only person considered capable of avoiding “an opposing majority”. In other words, as Prime Minister, he would hypothetically guarantee a certain stability, as Macron wants, gathering enough support to overcome motions of censure in a deeply divided National Assembly.
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However, the appointment of Cazeneuve – who is a leftist but left the Socialist Party in 2022 in protest against its alliances with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s more radical party, La France Insoumise (LFI) – threatens to cause an earthquake on the left and the dissolution of the NFP. The coalition, made up of the Socialists, the Communists, the LFI and the Ecologists, officially maintains the position that Castets is the only option, since, as the leading force in the Assembly (with 193 seats, although far from an absolute majority of 289), the NFP demands that Macron give it the right to govern.
The possibility of Cazeneuve’s appointment has already revealed deep divisions even within the PS, stirred by currents that are not in favor of the strategy of alliance with the LFI advocated by the party’s first secretary, Olivier Faure. This was demonstrated by the public positioning of figures such as the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo (close to Cazeneuve), who commented on Saturday that the former socialist prime minister would be a “serious” and “trustworthy” option to govern, capable of working with all parties.
Assuming that some Socialist and Communist MPs would break with the NFP’s official line to support him, Cazeneuve could virtually remain in government thanks to the Macronists (166 MPs), minority groups and the traditional right-wing Republicans party (47). Even Marine Le Pen’s nationalist right, the third largest force in the Assembly with 142 MPs, refrained from threatening to censure Cazeneuve, something it initially did given the possibility of an NFP-led government.
The big unknown would be what kind of policies Cazeneuve would carry out and who he would appoint as ministers, since, despite being a left-wing personality, he would depend eminently on Macronism and the right.
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