French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has been appointed prime minister, the Elysée Palace said Tuesday, after Manuel Valls stepped down from the role to launch a presidential bid, reports CNN.
Valls, 54, announced Monday he would put himself in the running to become the Socialist Party candidate for next year's presidential poll and will have to go through primary elections to win the party nomination.
Cazeneuve, 53, is best known for overseeing the nation's security forces in response to a spate of terror attacks that hit the country, killing 229 people in two years. The deadliest were the Paris attacks last year that left 130 people dead.
Cazeneuve is a trained lawyer but has had a long political career. In 1991 he became a councilor in the Cabinet of Thierry de Beaucé, then the secretary of state for international cultural relations, according to his biography on the interior ministry website
He was elected a member of parliament in 1997 and has since served as minister of state for European affairs and minister of state for the budget, before being appointed interior minister.
Valls' resignation has given way to a Cabinet shake-up, with Bruno Le Roux, a ranking socialist in the French National Assembly, nominated as interior minister in Cazeneuve's place.
If Valls wins the socialist nomination, he will likely face François Fillon of the Republican Party and Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National in the first round of the presidential election next spring.
President François Hollande of the same party announced on Thursday last week that he would not seek a second term as his popularity ratings plunge.
It is the first time since 1958, when France's fifth republic was created, that an incumbent president has not sought reelection.