Towards the epilogue? Nearly two months after the legislative elections, white smoke could finally come out of the Elysée Palace on Tuesday, unless the consultations leading to the choice of a Prime Minister capable of avoiding censure continue a little longer. In the president’s entourage, no information has filtered out on the personalities who could still be received at the Elysée Palace or consulted. And if we continue to hope for an appointment on Tuesday, this is also without any guarantee.
Key information to remember
⇒ Towards an appointment to Matignon today?
⇒ The “Beaudet” option holds the rope
⇒ An option that does not arouse enthusiasm among the political class
Macron tested Cazeneuve and Bertrand
After having swept aside the option of Lucie Castets, the candidate proposed by the New Popular Front (NFP), on August 26, and then seen the prospect of rallying the Republicans in a coalition recede, President Macron spoke on Monday with two possible contenders for Matignon, one from the left, Bernard Cazeneuve, and the other from the right, Xavier Bertrand.
The head of state wanted to “test” these two hypotheses, in other words to verify whether a government led by one or the other could avoid immediate parliamentary censure.
The “Beaudet” option?
But it was a third name, more unexpected because unknown to the general public, which emerged on Monday as a possible Prime Minister: that of Thierry Beaudet, the president of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), a profile from civil society, with a rather left-leaning sensibility.
Some sources even assured that the matter was settled before these new interviews at the Elysée – which, in this scenario, would therefore only have served to formally dismiss the political leaders received by the president.
But on Monday evening, several close associates of Emmanuel Macron themselves had difficulty following the presidential thinking and none of the main hypotheses seemed excluded, not even that of a right-wing Prime Minister like Xavier Bertrand. Emmanuel Macron has already spoken with Thierry Beaudet last week as part of his institutional discussions. “It is a very serious option,” assured AFP a close associate of the head of state who knows “very well” the former mutualist leader, a trained teacher, who supervised the citizens’ convention on the end of life.
This option, which does not arouse enthusiasm among the political class
The idea of appointing Thierry Beaudet, who is well-versed in the culture of consensus, to Matignon was received with a certain benevolence by the social partners. But it aroused less enthusiasm within the political class. A senior member of the presidential camp thus questions Thierry Beaudet’s ability to “go into the lion’s den in the Assembly”, while on the left, the socialist president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga, observes that the person concerned has “never governed” or “worked to bring together political forces”. “The New Popular Front supports a change in policy, and therefore, it will support a candidate, a person who is able to change policy (…) in this country”, responded the candidate of the left alliance Lucie Castets, seeming for the first time to make an overture to a name other than her own.
A social dialogue player remains doubtful: “the president is playing the game of civil society, but it is in fact to keep control. He wants to continue to govern.”
Benjamin Morel, lecturer in public law at the University of Paris 2, observes for his part that a possible technical government led by Thierry Beaudet is not guaranteed to receive the approval of the National Assembly. “All political groups must be able to recognize that there are no other alternatives,” notes the academic.