Macron sweats under growing pressure to appoint prime minister

PARIS — Embattled French President Emmanuel Macron was widely expected to appoint a prime minister over the weekend — but he did not yield.
Instead, he’ll hold talks at the Elysée Palace Monday morning with former Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, Xavier Bertrand, a leading figure from conservative party Les Républicains, and former Socialist PM Bernard Cazeneuve, who’s emerged as a front-runner to head the French government.
After weeks of deepening political crisis, Macron is under increasing pressure — including from his allies — to appoint a prime minister, nearly two months after his camp came in second during the surprise snap election he called in June.
Bernard Cazeneuve “says he’s not a candidate. If he’s asked, he’ll do it, out of duty, but he won’t do it at any price,” his team told POLITICO. 
The Elysée didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Time is increasingly running out. Under French rules, the government has until Oct. 1 to submit a draft 2025 budget to the parliament.
The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance won this summer’s snap legislative election but failed to garner an absolute majority. Macron has since refused to install the alliance’s candidate for the PM post, 37-year-old civil servant Lucie Castets, to the position.
“The situation calls for a fairly rapid resolution,” François Bayrou, the leader of the Macron-allied centrist Modem party, told French TV on Sunday.
He backed Cazeneuve, a seasoned politician who was Hollande’s prime minister and represents the French left’s most centrist-leaning fringe, he added. Cazeneuve left the Socialist party in 2022 to protest the alliance with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed.
In the past few days, the Elysée Palace has been keen to push Cazeneuve to replace Gabriel Attal, arguing he’s one of the only political figures who would survive a motion of no-confidence in the National Assembly.
There is no guarantee Cazeneuve will be named after Monday’s high-level talks, which come on the heels of unfruitful discussions between Macron and the country’s various political parties over the past few weeks.
In parallel, budgets discussions are expected to be heated between the NFP, who wants to raise taxes on the ultra-rich to finance more public services, and right-leaning parties, who want to cut public spending. France is among seven EU countries who have been placed under an excessive deficit procedure designed to rein in spending in countries exceeding the EU’s 3 percent GDP-deficit ratio.
“It’s about time we had an appointed government. We must not contribute to institutional instability,” Yaël Braun Pivet, the Macron-backed president of the National Assembly, told French media on Sunday.
Appointing Cazeneuve wouldn’t solve all of Macron’s problems. Reports on his possible appointment divided his former party’s leadership, with some calling on the Socialists to work with Cazeneuve, and others insisting that only an NFP government would be legitimate given the snap election’s results.
Meanwhile, France Unbowed presented on Saturday their legislative proposal to remove Macron because of his refusal to appoint Castets — but there’s little chance it will garner enough votes in parliament to actually happen.
This story has been updated
Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.