France's President Emmanuel Macron was Tuesday, September 3, considering a former right-wing minister to lead a new government after almost two months of deadlock, sources with knowledge of the discussions said.
The president met on Monday with ex-minister Xavier Bertrand, from the right, as well as former premier Bernard Cazeneuve, from the center-left, as two potential candidates. He was still "testing" both hypotheses on Tuesday, sources at the presidency told Le Monde. Leaders of the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) party in a meeting with Macron on Tuesday morning said they supported a nomination of Bertrand as long as he had sufficient backing from lawmakers, LR sources told Agence France-Presse.
The search has been on for a new premier after the left in early July became the largest bloc in a hung parliament after snap polls, followed by Macron's centrists and the far right. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has resigned but stayed on as a caretaker during the Paris Olympics and Paralympics. But the pressure is mounting to name a new premier by October 1, when a fresh government must file a draft budget law for 2025.
But in a blow to Bertrand's chances, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which has 126 seats in the 577-seat Assemblée Nationale, said it would back a no-confidence motion against Bertrand if he was appointed. The RN would only support a "technocratic" government that would implement a system of proportional representation for the next legislative elections rather than the current first-past-the-post set-up, said an RN official, asking not to be named.
Bertrand, 59, is the right-wing head of the northern Hauts-de-France region and previously served as labor and health minister between 2005 and 2012 under Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. He would be a more palatable choice for the right than Cazeneuve, 61, who was interior minister during the 2015 Paris attacks and briefly led the government for several months from late 2016 under President Francois Hollande.
On Monday, sources said 62-year-old Thierry Beaudet, the relatively unknown head of an advisory body called the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), was also in the race. But by Tuesday, he did not appear to be a favorite.
The left-wing alliance that won the July 7 vote this summer suggested from its ranks economist Lucie Castets, 37, but Macron has quashed the idea, arguing she would not survive a confidence vote in the hung parliament.