A political whirlwind summer saw French President Emmanuel Macron dissolving parliament, calling snap elections, and then facing a hung National Assembly. It is now time for him to undo the political Gordian knot he has tied and choose the next prime minister. A handful of potential picks are under scrutiny in talks that began Friday and should conclude in a white smoke announcement as soon as Monday evening – if all goes well.
Caught in the midst of political pandemonium that was temporarily put on pause for an “Olympic truce”, French President Emmanuel Macron has finally rolled up his sleeves and decided to tackle the beast ahead.
A day after the Olympic Games ended on August 12, Macron was thanking organisers in a speech outside the Elysée Palace when he expressed some dread over the weeks ahead by admitting he did not want “life to get back to normal”.
Normality returned with a bang on Friday, when he kicked off tense talks with French party leaders and senior members to try to find a prime minister, six weeks after the July 7 second round of legislative elections.
It is the first time a French president has taken this much time to choose a prime minister and form a government following parliamentary elections.
A Gordian knot
The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance and its candidate for premiership, Lucie Castets, met with Macron on Friday, kicking off a day of talks with left and centrist party representatives, including conservative president of southern France's Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region Laurent Wauquiez.
Monday’s line-up includes far-right leader Marine Le Pen and head of her National Rally party Jordan Bardella, along with Républicains (LR) leader Eric Ciotti. Neither of the three political leaders have expressed interest in joining any coalition government so far.
To try and undo the political deadlock of his own making, and to avert a no-confidence vote that would topple a fledgling government, Macron has implored parties to band together to form a broad coalition beyond party lines. In an interview with French broadcaster France 2 on July 23, he said, “The question is not a name. The question is what majority can emerge in the National Assembly” – France’s lower house of parliament.
But with so many political parties unwilling to work together, “it will be difficult to build a majority”, said Jean-Yves Camus, a French political scientist and research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS).
A view that Marta Lorimer, politics lecturer at Cardiff University, shares. “I do not see how [MPs] could be fine building a grand coalition with a lot of people they thoroughly disagree with,” she said. “It can happen, but usually there is a reason why... like a big crisis.”
Though Macron is not legally bound by the legislative election results and does not have to appoint a prime minister from the largest party in parliament, it is customary for the president to choose a head of government from the ranks of the biggest party or bloc. In the 2024 elections, the left-wing NFP won the most seats in the 577-member National Assembly with 182 seats, followed by Macron’s centrist alliance Ensemble ("Together") with 168. Le Pen’s National Rally and its allies came third with 143 seats.
Despite the NFP’s victory, Macron insisted that “no one” won the snap elections.
The president has already ruled out nominating members of the hard-left France Unbowed party or Le Pen’s National Rally. But a number of political figures are already being tipped to take up the premiership.
Technocrat Lucie Castets, the NFP pick
A Socialist party member in her youth, Castets, 37, did not even have a Wikipedia page before the NFP publicly announced their choice to put her forward as prime minister candidate on July 23.
An economist and, like Macron, graduate of the elite École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), Castets is a senior civil servant with a background in “fighting tax evasion”. She has been working for the Paris city government as finance director since October 2023 and is the only official candidate in the race. Though she has no prior experience in politics, Castets said one of her top priorities would be to “repeal the pension reform” and instill a “major tax reform” so that “everyone pays their fair share”.
Though Macron received Castets during the talks, his entourage has been adamant that he that does not want to include the extreme left or right, preferring a traditional right or centre-left alliance instead.
Castets’ lack of political experience and close ties with the hard-left France Unbowed party mean her chances of becoming prime minister are slim, according to Camus. “You have to at least have been an MP if you want to get the job,” he said.
Though she may be “the one most likely to have some sort of relative majority of supporters”, according to Lorimer, “that is [still] very far from being a majority.”
“If she is chosen,” Camus said, “a vote of no confidence is almost 100 percent certain”.
A vote of no confidence must be signed by one tenth of all MPs in the National Assembly. But once a motion is tabled, it needs an absolute majority (289 votes) to pass, which no political group currently has.
If a vote of no confidence goes through, the prime minister must resign.
Xavier Bertrand, the conservative favourite
A former minister and head of the northern Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand is currently the favourite for a centrist-led coalition.
In the course of a political career spanning nearly 30 years, Bertrand has held a range of posts. He has been health and labour minister, MP and mayor. Backed by the pro-Macron camp including outgoing Minister for Gender Equality Aurore Bergé, he is “centre-right on moral issues like family and LGBTQ rights”, Camus explained.
Presiding over the Hauts-de-France region since 2016, he has managed to stop a far-right surge from taking over the region – despite the National Rally's significant gains in recent years.
If he is chosen by Macron, Camus said, it could be a sign that the president is “willing to make a coalition with the moderate right, but it would also mean a split”.
“Within the Républicains, there will be those who are willing to work with Bertrand and those who will say they want to stay in the opposition,” he added.
An alliance including only centrist and right-wing blocs is unlikely to push out the New Popular Front, meaning Bertrand would also be vulnerable to a no-confidence motion. “I do not see [the Républicains and Ensemble] wanting to govern with the National Rally, so trying to form a kind of right-wing majority seems dubious,” said Lorimer.
Bernard Cazeneuve, top cop during the 2015 terror attacks
Cazeneuve served as interior minister at the time of the 2015 attacks in Paris, when Islamist gunmen carried out a gun-and-bomb assault on six restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and a sports stadium and killed 130 people.
The former socialist heavyweight also served as prime minister at the end of François Hollande’s mandate from December 2016 to May 2017, the shortest tenure in modern French history.
Cazeneuve left the Socialist party in 2022 when it struck an alliance with France Unbowed, meaning the 61-year-old could satisfy more moderate members of the NFP. “He knows the job and he is on the left,” Camus remarked.
“The message Macron would be sending [if Cazeneuve is appointed] is that he is willing to work with the left, but not with someone who is associated with the far-left France Unbowed or Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” he added, referring to the pugnacious party founder who is a divisive figure in French politics.
Cazeneuve has publicly stated that he would be prepared to become prime minister once again, telling French broadcaster LCI in July that: “I have never refused to put wisdom where there is folly. If it must be done in a collective way, I’m always prepared to do so.”
But Lorimer is sceptical of his capacity to bring together a broad coalition, including Républicain and Socialist members, without angering the left. “I think the left would immediately see this as an attempt to divide them,” she said.
The great unknown
Some other names have been widely reported in French media as potential candidates, including Valérie Pécresse, head of the wider Paris region, and Karim Bouamrane, mayor of St. Ouen, a northern suburb of Paris.
A member of the Républicains, Pécresse gained ground as a potential PM candidate after the Olympic Games came to an end. Applauding their collaboration for the big event, Macron thanked her in an Elysée speech, signalling they had overcome their previous differences.
Pécresse may be riding a wave of popularity following the Paris Olympics, but for Camus, “she has a very secure job as the president of the most affluent region in the country. I don’t see why she would want to become prime minister.”
Bouamrane is mayor of a town in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, France’s poorest, host to the Olympic Village during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Staunchly left-wing, he is very critical of France Unbowed and has a history in both the communist and socialist parties.
The middle child in a modest family of Moroccan origin, Bouamrane described in an interview by the New York Times being raised in a building so gritty that his neighbouring friends in nearby concrete high-rises felt sorry for him.
Bouamrane has garnered popularity in recent weeks and if Macron appoints him to become head of the government, “it would be a very strong signal that you can be of foreign descent, come from a North African country, and become prime minister,” Camus remarked.
“But there are very few cases of people who have become PM and were mayor before,” he added.
Read moreFrance’s summer break is ending – and the bitter fight to form a government is back
Bouamrane himself has stated that he has no personal ambitions to become premier and has backed Castets.
There is no indication of when exactly the president will make his choice, but observers expect him to do so sometime next week. For now, the best experts can do is keep guessing until this period of great unknown comes to an end.
“I think there will be a pact of non-belligerence between parties,” said Lorimer. “Because if not, France will just go back to being without a government again.”
As for Camus, only one thing is certain. “What I can rule out is Macron resigning. He wants to stay until the end of his term,” he said. “There is one thing that has obsessed him – he does not want to give the keys of the Elysée Palace to Marine Le Pen.”
