A page turns.
This Friday at midnight officially ends Macron's first five-year term.
The re-elected president promised a "new" president and five different years.
But the first few days will still have an air of deja vu.
While the name of the new Prime Minister has still not been announced, Jean Castex is playing extra time.
The “deconfinement” gentleman who has become head of government must therefore leave Matignon.
But Jean Castex will still remain Prime Minister until Monday, at least.
A final trip is on his agenda: to lead the French delegation for the canonization in the Vatican of the explorer and then hermit Charles de Foucauld, this Sunday.
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The displacement was known.
On Friday, Matignon removed the doubt by confirming that Jean Castex would go well to the Vatican in his capacity as Prime Minister and not as a former head of government.
A last meeting before closing the boxes definitively, a "political necessity" according to him, while Emmanuel Macron seeks to obtain a new breath for the legislative elections in June.
The scenario of a departure at the beginning of next week is therefore taking shape.
“The resignation will take place on Monday,” a majority official believes.
It remains to be seen whether his successor will be appointed in the process and in what time frame the new government team will be formed.
In the meantime, Jean Castex said goodbye to the staff of Matignon this Wednesday, then Thursday evening to the ministers, invited to a buffet in the gardens with their spouses.
“Never forget that we are only servants!
Political action is collective action.
Ambitions are legitimate but they are only worth if they are at the service of the collective, ”he said, according to a participant, to the ministers who offered him a standing ovation and a rugby jersey.
The future head of government – a woman a priori, according to confidences of relatives of the president – should therefore be hard at work for a first Council of Ministers on Wednesday or the following days.
A “techno” at Matignon?
But, in absolute terms, anything is possible, especially since the Head of State always willingly poses as the “master of the clocks” and of suspense.
“It is a custom, a republican tradition that the Prime Minister presents his resignation when a new President of the Republic is elected.
He is not obliged to do so, but it is a republican tradition, ”explains Dominique Rousseau, professor of constitutional law at the Panthéon-Sorbonne university, to AFP.
In the event of re-election, he can do so the day after the election - this is the case when leaving a cohabitation - or at the start of the new term.
In theory, the Prime Minister can also expedite current affairs until the legislative elections of June 12 and 19.
He will then submit his resignation to the President the day after the election.
“It is not a written rule but it is the use which has always been respected since 1958″, notes the constitutionalist, recalling the precedent of Georges Pompidou after the re-election of General de Gaulle in 1965.
Emmanuel Macron assured Monday in Berlin that he already knew who his next Prime Minister would be, endowed according to him with a "social", "ecological" and productive profile.
The Minister of Labor Elisabeth Borne, the Director General of Unesco Audrey Azoulay, the former Socialist Minister of Social Affairs Marisol Touraine... Several names with a "techno" profile are circulating.
Read alsoThe Castex government on the way out: Girardin, Taquet, Pietraszewski… these ministers who struggled to exist
"The game is not over even if the + techno + hold the rope", assures a tenor of the majority who pleads for a more political Prime Minister as the legislative elections approach.
Some are calling on the Head of State to delay no longer while the forces of the left, united behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon, are taking center stage at the start of the campaign.
"Appointing the Prime Minister later can help to have a small effect on the announcement of the new government", estimates Benjamin Morel, lecturer in Public Law at the University of Paris 2. "But you will not reverse the table" if the choice falls on "personalities that are not very prominent in public opinion", he warns.