Thirty-five people want to be the next president of France. What could possibly go wrong? | World news

“It’s a real risk,” said French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. It is said that “This jumble of ambitions reflects the lack of interest in reality on the part of all these candidates, as voters find the whole thing strange,” he said last month.

It has a meaning. By this time next year, France will have a new president, and Emmanuel Macron, who is constitutionally barred from serving more than two consecutive terms, will have left office after a decade in the Élysée Palace.

Number of candidates vying to replace him (whether officially announced, openly preparing to do so, known to have presidential aspirations, or simply listed as “interested”) currently (wait) it stands at 35.

The obvious danger, as Paul Taylor has observed, is that with so many runners and cyclists from the moderate left, center and center-right, the presidential race will become a race for the far right, which is now comfortably ahead in all first-round polls.

The blow for the EU will be huge. A nationalist leader in Paris could paralyze the bloc’s decision-making, challenge the rule of EU law and impose a “France First” agenda that undermines the single market and the Schengen free travel area.

But unless mainstream parties get their act together, the chances that the EU’s second-largest economy, and from this time next year only nuclear energy, will be led by a far-right president look worryingly high.

last thrown His hat in the ring is former prime minister Gabriel Attal, who declared (as so-called French presidents should) that he “passionately” loved France and the French and was “tired of the 50 shades of managing decline.”

But Attal, who will become France’s youngest prime minister when he is appointed to the job in 2024, faces two major obstacles: not only his perceived closeness to the outgoing president, currently languishing with a 75% disapproval rating, but also centrist rivals.

The leader of Macron’s Renaissance party follows Édouard Philippe, one of the president’s former prime ministers, the popular, moderate-right mayor of the port city of Le Havre and the head of the Horizons party, which has until now been an ally of Macron.

Both could be challenged by a third centrist, justice minister Gérald Darmanin, who has said he also plans to play a role in the elections “either by becoming a candidate or by supporting the person best placed to represent the centrist camp.”

Attal and Philippe have reportedly set up a “mechanism” to consider whether one or the other should step aside by early 2027. But centrists are not alone in their confusion.

Similar, if not worse, chaos prevails on the fragmented centre-right (2022 presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse received just 5% of the vote in the first round), but which has supported successive Macron governments since 2024.

Three candidates have already been announced there, and another may be coming soon. Bruno Retailleau, the late hard-line interior minister, will run for the Les Républicains party, but a regional president and a mayor are challenging him to represent the broader right.

It is also possible that Dominique de Villepin, who became prime minister 20 years ago, will also participate in the race. Again, there are calls from both the center and the centre-right for a single candidate to run for both camps, but there is no agreement on how these candidates might be selected.

The area to the left is even more hopelessly confused. The 17 potential or declared candidates include a former president (François Hollande), prime minister and cabinet minister, as well as various (former) MPs and a member of the European Parliament.

Some of the socialists (They are currently fighting among themselves), the Greens and smaller left-wing groups want to field a common candidate, but they can’t decide how. The Greens, the Communists and the pro-EU independent Raphaël Glucksmann do not.

The left is further divided over whether to engage in any way with veteran radical leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is running for the Élysée for the fourth time. Some argue that the moderate left would be destroyed without him; others say he is toxic to most voters.

Even on the far right there is an element of doubt: the National Convention (RN) will find out on July 7 whether Marine Le Pen’s legal problems have definitively blocked her candidacy; In this case, Jordan Bardella, whom he carefully selected, will compete in his place.

The stakes are high

To be fair, most analysts are confident the field will narrow by the fall. They note that French presidential races generally do not start until the New Year, and very few are won by front-runners.

But the stakes couldn’t be higher. The bottom line: if the center and center-right cannot agree on a common candidate, the chances of Le Pen or Bardella (both receiving over 35% of the votes in the first round) improving their presidential chances increase.

If the moderate left cannot nominate a single candidate, it will not be able to advance to the second round, as it did in the last two presidential elections. And if both mainstream camps fail to unite, France will face a second round of elections pitting Bardella or Le Pen against Mélenchon.

Polls suggest that either far-right candidate will easily win the first round, which will likely take place on April 11 or 18. On the other hand, Philippe is the only candidate predicted to remotely defeat any of the far-right candidates in the second round.

As Angelique Chrisafis points out, polls also show that 74% of French voters want either a “radical transformation” or “profound changes in France”; a major increase in the last few years that clearly calls for serious policy initiatives.

However, Brice warned Teinturier The prevailing sentiment among voters, according to pollster Ipsos, is that “no one is bothered by them; politicians give the strong impression that they are only interested in themselves and their candidates.”

These are all potential recipes for disaster. Joseph de Weck of the Foreign Policy Research Institute thinks the game is not over yet: France may have a “fatalistic and depressive streak”, he said, but also a “deep voluntaristic and idealistic tradition”.

Will there be an opportunity to exclude the RN? As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1856, the French are “the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe; objects alternately of admiration, hatred, pity or terror, but never indifference”.

If the feeling were admiration, we’d better come next summer.

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