Macron multiplies consultations to appoint prime minister after seven weeks of blockage

Emmanuel Macron is stepping up consultations to appoint a prime minister, almost two months after the second round of the legislative elections last July, which plunged the country into crisis. The president will meet on Monday Bernard Cazeneuve, the last head of government of the former socialist leader François Hollande, who will also meet with the president, as will the former conservative head of state Nicolas Sarkozy. Xavier Bertrand, conservative president of the Hauts-de-France region, will take part in other talks in the afternoon. Pressure is mounting to appoint a new executive, a titanic task after seven weeks of deadlock, after the parliament was divided into three blocs, none with a majority.

The meetings have not been officially announced by the Elysée, but by sources close to the politicians. Cazeneuve, 61, was the Hollande’s last prime minister between 2016 and 2017 and also served as Minister of the Interior between 2014 and 2016. His name has been circulating insistently in recent days to succeed Gabriel Attal, who resigned as head of government It’s been more than a month now. The Executive has been in office since then and has already surpassed the record of 38 days reached in 1953, during the unstable IV Republicthe previous French constitutional regime.

Bertrand, 59, is the current conservative president of the Hauts-de-France region and was three times minister between 2005 and 2012, respectively for Health, Labour, and Employment. His name has also been mentioned publicly for the post, especially from the right.

The fact that Macron has decided to meet Bertrand and Cazeneuve, and his last two predecessors, does not mean that he is going to appoint a prime minister yet. But it does suggest that it could happen very soon. In France there is no vote of investiture for the head of the Executive. The Constitution, in its Article eightestablishes that the president must appoint a prime minister and protect his government against any possible vote of no confidence. The Elysée considers that Cazeneuve is the only personality who can avoid a “majority against” and guarantee a certain stability. Macron has insisted on several occasions that he seeks a “solid majority”, that is, stable, and “necessarily plural”, attached to principles such as the defence of the European Union.

French President Nicolas Maduro on Monday ruled out naming Lucie Castets, the left-wing candidate, as prime minister. The New Popular Front (NFP), the alliance made up of the Socialists, Communists, Greens and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI), was claiming the keys to the government as the bloc that won the most seats in the elections. The coalition became the largest force in the National Assembly with 193 of 577 deputies, although it fell far short of the absolute majority of 289. The presidential bloc, made up of three centre and centre-right parties, won 166; and the far-right National Rally (RN), 126.

An NFP government “would immediately have a majority of more than 350 deputies against it,” argued Macron. in a statementafter concluding his first round of political consultations with representatives of the various parliamentary forces. The leader, at that time, also urged the socialists, ecologists and communists to “cooperate with the other political forces”.

Both the Macronist bloc and the traditional right (47 seats) and the far right have insisted that they would vote a motion of censure against an NFP Government, not only for including LFI ministers but for your program. The left-wing coalition proposesamong other measures, repealing Macron’s pension reform, which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, and raising the minimum wage to 1,600 euros per month (Currently it is about 1,400).

Pros and cons of Cazeneuve

Cazeneuve meets several criteria sought by Macron. In 2022, the experienced politician, who currently works as a lawyer, left the Socialist Party after his party’s agreement with LFI to create an alliance with environmentalists and communists, similar to the current one and which ended up imploding. His entourage has told the press that he has not put himself forward as a candidate for prime minister, but that “if he does so, it is out of duty and to avoid additional difficulties in the country.” The former interior minister is respected both on the left and on the right and has agreed with Macron, who was economy minister under Hollande.

Her appointment, however, threatens to tear apart the left and break up the alliance hastily created before the legislative elections to confront the far right. The NFP maintains that Castets is the only option to govern and has said it will refuse to meet Macron again if she is not appointed to the post. Macron’s veto of the left-wing coalition entering the government has highlighted the deep divisions within the PS.

In recent days, currents contrary to the leadership have expressed their rejection of the strategy of Olivier Faurethe party’s first secretary, who has defended alliances with LFI. For him, the party – which practically disappeared during the Macron years – is now stronger within the left-wing coalition. But not everyone sees it that way. Two other groups believe that it is necessary to have influence in the appointment of the future prime minister and therefore agree to new meetings with the president.

The first reactions to the hypothesis that Cazeneuve would be appointed head of government came on Sunday. It was only late in the afternoon that the president was to meet Bertrand. “Bernard Cazeneuve is on the list of profiles that I think are capable of uniting beyond their own camp,” said the president of the National Assembly, the Macronist Yaël Braun-Pivet. on television. It is “time for us to have a government,” he stressed.

For Manuel Bompard, coordinator of LFI, the appointment of Hollande’s former prime minister would be a “denial of democracy.” The politician, he insisted, “cannot be considered a left-wing prime minister, since he does not have the support of the four left-wing political formations in the National Assembly.” RN spokesperson Laurent Jacobelli, He also said that having Cazeneuve as head of government would be “a seven-year leap back”, a return “to square one” and a “failure for Emmanuel Macron”.

The big question now will be whether Macron proposes Cazeneuve or Bertrand as prime minister, and whether the chosen one accepts. The legislative elections of June 30 and July 7, called by surprise by Macron after the victory of the National Rally in the European elections, caused a political earthquake in France and ended up drawing scenarios hitherto unknown.

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