Jean-Marc Ayrault is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 15 May 2012 to 31 March 2014. He later was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2017. He previously was Mayor of Nantes from 1989 to 2012 and led the Socialist Party group in the National Assembly from 1997 to 2012.

Nantes is a city in Loire-Atlantique of France on the Loire, 50 km (31 mi) from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 320,732 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabitants (2020). With Saint-Nazaire, a seaport on the Loire estuary, Nantes forms one of the main north-western French metropolitan agglomerations.