PARIS (Reuters) – President Emmanuel Macron continued his consultations on Monday to find a prime minister, starting with a one-and-a-quarter-hour meeting with former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
The head of state embraced Bernard Cazeneuve at the bottom of the stairs in the vestibule of the Elysée Palace and the former prime minister made no comment as he left, Reuters observed on the scene.
Emmanuel Macron was then due to receive former Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande as well as former Minister and President of the Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand.
More than 50 days after the second round of legislative elections, impatience is growing in the opposition, which considers this long wait as a denial of democracy and is worried about the halt to reforms.
LFI deputies Eric Coquerel and Liot Charles de Courson, who lead the Finance Committee of the Assembly, urged Bercy to provide them with documents on the budget in preparation, which must be presented on October 1. The resigning Minister of Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, assured on Saturday that the budgetary timetable would be kept.
La France Insoumise (LFI) reaffirmed on Monday that the left-wing coalition New Popular Front (NFP) would file a motion of censure against any government that was not led by Lucie Castets, its candidate for Matignon.
On France 2, Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI deputies, repeated that “the four formations of the New Popular Front are aligned to say that we would censure any government other than that of Ms Lucie Castets”.
Bernard Cazeneuve, François Hollande’s last Prime Minister, who left the PS in 2022 to protest against the rapprochement with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s camp, “belongs to the old world of ‘Hollandism’ from which we want (…) to turn the page”, added Mathilde Panot.
RN REQUESTS EXTRAORDINARY SESSION
“I feel like I’ve gone back in time, a bit like a space-time rift,” LFI MEP Manon Aubry said on Europe 1 and CNews.
“We will censor any continuity with ‘Macronism'”, however qualified the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, on BFMTV-RMC.
Interviewed on TF1, National Rally (RN) MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy declared that a government led by Xavier Bertrand, former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, would “undoubtedly” be censored, “because what it brings is the bankruptcy of France”.
If Emmanuel Macron were to appoint a Bernard Cazeneuve government, it “depends[rait] of what he is going to propose,” said Jean-Philippe Tanguy, adding that “Mr. Cazeneuve is Mr. Macron, it’s the same.”
For her part, the leader of the RN, Marine Le Pen, called for the convening of an extraordinary session of Parliament, like the Communist Party (PC) and the PS last week, while the deputies are due to return to the benches of the National Assembly on October 1.
In a press release published on Monday, the RN is calling for “a debate on the situation of France’s public finances as well as that of social security finances” but also on “the security situation”.
The deputies of the Democratic and Republican Left group (GDR), which includes the communists, demanded in a press release that Parliament be able to “take back the reins and get to work without further delay”, in particular to “deliberate as quickly as possible on the proposed laws arising from the NFP programme”.
“It is not normal for democracy to be on holiday,” Olivier Faure summed up on BFMTV-RMC on Monday.
Having resigned since July 8, Gabriel Attal’s government has managed current affairs throughout this summer, which has notably seen Paris host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which last until September 7.
Gabriel Attal travelled to Issy-les-Moulineaux on Monday to mark the start of the school year.
(Report by Elizabeth Pineau with Kate Entringer, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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