Macron meets former Prime Minister Cazeneuve on Monday amid government negotiations

September 1 () –

French President Emmanuel Macron will meet with former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Monday as he looks to appoint a new prime minister following parliamentary elections.

Macron, who according to sources close to the president will announce his decision “in the coming days,” according to Bloomberg, will also meet with former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy in a round of consultations.

Cazeneuve served as Prime Minister under President Hollande from December 2016 to May 2017 and has been tipped to be one of the favourites to succeed Gabriel Attal as head of the Council of Ministers in recent days.

A lawyer by profession, Cazeneuve, 61, left the Socialist Party in 2022 to protest its alliance with the leftist party La France Insoumise.

Since then, he has been perceived as a moderate politician, to the liking of the French president who, for example, has refused to appoint Lucie Castets as Prime Minister, the option chosen by the left-wing bloc of the New Popular Front, which received the most votes in the legislative elections.

French government sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, believe that the meeting only reinforces the rumours that have been circulating for days. “The hypothesis about (the appointment of) Cazeneuve seems valid,” they told the newspaper ‘Le Figaro’.

Meanwhile, Bernard Cazeneuve’s entourage reminds the same newspaper that the former prime minister has not had “any direct contact” with Macron or with “direct or indirect collaborators” of the president.

However, the same sources point out that Cazeneuve, who will present himself at the meeting as “a responsible man of the left”, would be willing to accept a hypothetical offer from Macron “if the conditions for a normal, regular and stable institutional functioning are met”.