Caroline Connan joins us out of Paris.
What are we looking at today, Caroline? It seems like we are quite close to
getting a name for a new prime minister, at least before Wednesday.
That's where the Elysee Palace is saying at the moment.
And as you mentioned, Emmanuel Macron is meeting today with two very key figures,
one from the centre left, Bernard Cazeneuve, who actually decided to split
off from the far left quite early on, even before the snap elections back in
2022, during the last presidential election.
So clearly a centre left figure. And another song to write a personality
battle who clashes a lot with Marine Le Pen in his region in the north of
France, where he's president of the region.
So quite to interesting figures. He's also meeting Emmanuel Macron with
seeking advice from two former presidents from both sides of the
political spectrum. Today, he's meeting first.
We've learned, a former socialist president later this morning, and then
with Nicolas Sarkozy, who actually disagrees with the option of Bernard
Cazeneuve as a solution to this chaos that we've seen for the last two months.
So if it ends up being Ben, I guess, what do we know about him?
We know he was a first European minister, then budget minister, then
interior minister under Francois Hollande.
He was, for example, interior minister during the terrorist attacks of 2015.
So a quite present in the media at that time.
And then he was prime minister towards the end of the legislature just before
Emmanuel Macron was elected in the first place.
So we'll see if we see some white smoke later today at the Elysee Awards is
probably going to be hopefully by tonight or tomorrow, but before
Wednesday. White smoke at the Elise.
I love that. Caroline, walk us through, though, just
how much pushback some of these could get.
You kind of walk us through the timeline there.
They're also kind of staring at a budget, a looming budget deadline with
the EU. Just how quickly and how speedily?
Because in these next 48 hours go and then the budget negotiations off of
that. That's right.
So clearly, there is huge divisions in the left wing between those who want to
split from the far left, which includes Bannon, Gessner and those who actually
don't want to break anything of the new popular Front and want to implement the
full program. Clearly, if it is Baraka's no, it's not
going to be the full program of the new Popular Front.
The question is what kind of costly measures is going to keep in the next
budget, which he has to present over the next few weeks.
The deadline is October 1st. The current caretaker finance ministry,
led by William Newman, has already prepared a draft budget with an overall
envelope of €4,292 billion, which is the same budget as the previous year.
So clearly not including any major reforms, any major savings on new
spending. So what kind of measures could backers
of our Center-Left left keep in this new budget?
That's a big question he's going to name probably and the details of his
government, the Minister, the finance minister,
2 to 3 days after we know the final name of this Prime Minister.
The good news is that according to the cost of the growth for France in the
third quarter should be actually better than the two previous quarter due to the
positive impact of the Olympic Games.