According to the weekly MarianneAt the end of July, Lucie Castets’ team asked the New Popular Front for a monthly budget of 51,000 euros for its operations as well as 9,000 euros for the salary of the senior civil servant. The person concerned denies having received a single euro from the coalition.
During a summer break, Lucie Castets put her career on hold. Propelled to the forefront of the political scene on July 23, the candidate of the New Popular Front for Matignon experienced an equally rapid fall once her offer of service was rejected by Emmanuel Macron, almost a month later. However, the senior civil servant has not abandoned her idea of embodying the coalition and even demanded an envelope of more than 50,000 euros per month from the left-wing parties during the summer, according to information from the weekly Marianne.
While the suspense surrounding the name of the future prime minister should soon be coming to an end, more than a month and a half after the resignation of Gabriel Attal, the left-wing forces are trying until the end to impose their champion on Emmanuel Macron. Behind the scenes, many seem to have acted on the presidential veto. Nevertheless, the former Director of Finance for the city of Paris, who recently resigned from her post, continues to believe in her new destiny. Just last week, she “proposed” to start again at “listening to the population (…) in order to discuss, to hear, to rebuild links”.
But with what means to continue the adventure? According to Marianne, at the end of July, the right-hand man of the ex-socialist, Arnaud Bontemps, addressed himself directly to the treasurer of the Ecologists to request a global envelope of 51,000 euros per month for the operation of the Castets team. In his letter, the referendary advisor to the Court of Auditors specifies that the global envelope does not include “Lucie’s remuneration” to be taken into account at the beginning of September.
Still according to the weekly, the salary then envisaged for the defeated candidate at Matignon was at the time 9,000 euros per month. A budget of 60,000 euros validated by the four treasurers of the NFP, each party having to contribute according to its number of constituencies, i.e. 42% LFI, 32% PS, 17% for the ecologists and 9% for the PCF. Beyond the presumed salary of Lucie Castets, the amount of which flirts with that of a minister, the rest of the budget was to allow the remuneration of three (or even four) collaborators. But also to rent a Parisian office “around the Place de la République” as well as financing the senior official’s travel.
This Wednesday, Lucie Castets reacted to the emerging controversy, specifying that “Neither she nor her team” had not “received a single euro from the New Popular Front”. “A budget estimate was proposed in July by the NFP, it was never implemented. The hundreds of hours of preparation, meetings and travel were done on a voluntary basis”she specifies on X.
