"I don't regret anything": Nearly a year after her non-nomination, Lucie Castets remains unbitter.

On July 23, 2024, after 16 days of intense negotiations, the New Popular Front, which came out on top in the early legislative elections, agreed on a name for the post of Prime Minister: a senior civil servant, unknown to the general public, Lucie Castets.

Far from being a coincidence, her name came up just before Emmanuel Macron's television appearance on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. The French then discovered the face of Lucie Castets , 37, with her gray hair pulled back, in a dark suit and discreet makeup. A leading figure in the collective "Our Public Services" and director of finance and purchasing for the city of Paris, it is she that the Union of the Left wants to see enter Matignon.

"I wasn't so bold as to expect my phone to ring," recalls the ENA graduate, who only had 24 hours to decide. "When I saw Olivier Faure's number pop up on my cell phone, I didn't think about it for a second. It was only a few minutes into the conversation that I began to understand what he was getting at." After sixteen days of negotiations, the various components of the New Popular Front agreed on her profile: a left-wing, technocratic, and consensual woman who would rally the Insoumis, the Ecologists, and the Socialists alike. "We were all aware of the impasse we were in. I said to myself, 'Well, if I can contribute to this allowing us to collectively come out on top, I'm going to do it.'"

Even if it meant underestimating the impact of such an appointment, she admitted a year later. Lucie Castets was particularly affected by a controversy she hadn't anticipated over a staggering monthly salary of €9,000 that she allegedly claimed from the NFP. In reality, it was a gross salary plan, never ratified. A year after this episode, the ENA graduate is still irritated by it.

Lucie Castets also had to leave her job. "When I embarked on this adventure, I didn't realize that it would have these consequences on my professional life and also on my personal life. But I don't regret it because I often wondered what would have happened if I had refused, " she explains. "Politics has also always played a very important role in my life and so in a way, it was embracing this path in a way that was a little more abrupt and radical than I could ever have imagined before. I don't regret it at all."

During the summer, she traveled extensively and tried to gain traction with Emmanuel Macron, who dismissed her name and postponed the appointment of a Prime Minister until after the Olympic Games. Lucie Castets struggled, but she hung on. "Giving up at that time because the President of the Republic seemed to disqualify my candidacy would not, I think, have been respectful of the mandate given to us by nine million voters who turned to the left and also chose a Republican front," she said. "These are voters who nevertheless wanted a very strong change in policy. We had a kind of responsibility towards them to continue to do our part and play our role." Emmanuel Macron finally appointed the Republican Michel Barnier on September 5.

Since then, Lucie Castets has always wanted to unite the left, but the mood has changed. On July 2, 2025, she organized a rally in Bagneux to propose a common name for the 2027 presidential election. La France Insoumise, the French Communist Party, and Place Publique declined the invitation. "What I know, what I see, and what I hear is a very strong desire for the union of the left to continue," she repeated. "The reality is more complex within the party apparatuses themselves. Elected officials who occupy important positions in the leadership of parties who did not wish to go to Bagneux told me: 'You can count on me.'"

The tone is confident, but the reality is more cutting. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for example, mocked his idea of a left-wing primary : "I'm not bitter, it's not really my nature. Jean-Luc Mélenchon was a great support during the summer of 2024 and I think that what I represent today no longer corresponds to his strategy. I read the positions taken against me not as an attack on my person, but more as a position towards the union of the left, a one-off position, a position that corresponds to the strategy. I also maintain good relations with certain figures of La France Insoumise."

After Matignon, does Lucie Castets see herself at the Élysée? "I don't think you can play both roles: the one who unites and the one who contributes personally to your responsibilities," she smiles. Since the summer of 2024, Lucie Castets has had a second child and created a consulting firm specializing in the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. But other desires drive her: "In the short or medium term, I don't rule out returning to the civil service or working in the non-profit sector," she concludes.