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 Franceportal |
Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in France on 11 April 2027, with a second round on 25 April if required. The elections may be held earlier under exceptional circumstances, such as the resignation or death of the incumbent president Emmanuel Macron. Macron is not eligible to run in the 2027 elections, as he is limited to two consecutive terms in office.
The president of the French Republic is elected to a five-year term in a two-round election under Article 7 of the constitution: if no candidate secures an absolute majority (50%+1) (including blank and void ballots) of votes in the first round, a second round is held two weeks later between the two candidates who received the most votes. [1] Per the constitution, the first round of the presidential election must be held between 20 and 35 days before the transition of power at the end of the five-year term of the incumbent president. Because Emmanuel Macron took office on 14 May 2022, the transition of power is slated to take place on 13 May 2027, meaning that the first round of the presidential election will be held between 8 and 23 April 2027, with the second round held two weeks after the first. [2]
To be listed on the first-round ballot, candidates must secure 500 signatures (often referred to as parrainages) from national or local elected officials from at least 30 different departments or overseas collectivities, with no more than a tenth of these signatories from any single department. [3] According to the Article 6 of the French constitution, [4] the president cannot "exercise more than two consecutive periods in office". For that reason, Emmanuel Macron is no longer eligible to run in the election for a third consecutive term.
According to reporting by Le Monde , former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, and current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal are seen as allies of Macron who may run to succeed him in 2027. [10]
French presidential debates, broadcast on TV, traditionally occurred only between the two rounds of the presidential elections.
In 2017, for the first time, a presidential debate took place prior to the first round.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a French politician who was a member of the National Assembly for Bouches-du-Rhône's 4th constituency from 2017 to 2022. He led the La France Insoumise group in the National Assembly from 2017 to 2021. Mélenchon was elected as a member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2009 and reelected in 2014. He has run for president of France three times. In 2022, he came within 1.2 percentage points of reaching the second round in France's two-round voting system.
Presidential elections were held in France on 23 April and 7 May 2017. As no candidate won a majority in the first round, a runoff was held between the top two candidates, Emmanuel Macron of En Marche! (EM) and Marine Le Pen of the National Front (FN), which Macron won with a difference of more than 30% of the vote. The presidential election was followed by a legislative election to elect members of the National Assembly on 11 and 18 June. Incumbent president François Hollande of the Socialist Party (PS) was eligible to run for a second term, but declared on 1 December 2016 that he would not seek reelection in light of low approval ratings, making him the first incumbent head of state of the Fifth Republic not to seek reelection.
Philippe Poutou is a French far-left politician, former trade unionist and car factory worker. He was the New Anticapitalist Party's candidate in the presidential elections of 2012, 2017 and 2022, in which he respectively received 1.15%, 1.09% and 0.76% of the vote.
The Republicans is a liberal conservative political party in France, largely inspired by the tradition of Gaullism. The party was formed on 30 May 2015 as the re-incorporation of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which had been established in 2002 under the leadership of then-President of France, Jacques Chirac.
Legislative elections were held in France on 11 and 18 June 2017 to elect the 577 members of the 15th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. They followed the two-round presidential election won by Emmanuel Macron. The centrist party he founded in 2016, La République En Marche! (LREM), led an alliance with the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem); together, the two parties won 350 of the 577 seats—a substantial majority—in the National Assembly, including an outright majority of 308 seats for LREM. The Socialist Party (PS) was reduced to 30 seats and the Republicans (LR) reduced to 112 seats, and both parties' allies also suffered from a marked drop in support; these were the lowest-ever scores for the centre-left and centre-right in the legislative elections. The movement founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, la France Insoumise (FI), secured 17 seats, enough for a group in the National Assembly. Among other major parties, the French Communist Party (PCF) secured ten and the National Front (FN) obtained eight seats. Both rounds of the legislative election were marked by record low turnout.
The French Socialist Party held a two-round presidential primary to select a candidate for the 2017 presidential election on 22 and 29 January 2017. It was the second open primary held by the center-left coalition, after the primary in 2011 in which François Hollande defeated Martine Aubry to become the Socialist nominee. Hollande went on to defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election. However, because of his low approval rating, he announced that he would not seek re-election, becoming the first president of the Fifth Republic to decide not to run for a second term. The primary was contested by seven candidates, four from the Socialist Party and three representing other parties part of the left-wing electoral alliance.
La France Insoumise is a left-wing political party in France. It was launched in 2016 by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, then a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and former co-president of the Left Party (PG). It aims to implement the eco-socialist and democratic socialist programme L'Avenir en commun. The party utilises the lower case Greek letter phi as its logotype.
Christophe Castaner is a French politician who served as Minister of the Interior from 16 October 2018 to 6 July 2020 under President Emmanuel Macron. He had been elected in 2017 for a three-year term as chairman of the La République En Marche! party with Macron's support. Castaner was Government Spokesperson under Prime Minister Édouard Philippe in 2017 and Secretary of State for Relations with Parliament from 2017 to 2018. He was also Macron's 2017 presidential campaign spokesman.
Presidential elections were held in France on 10 and 24 April 2022. As no candidate won a majority in the first round, a runoff was held, in which Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen and was re-elected as President of France. Macron, from La République En Marche! (LREM), had defeated Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, once already in the 2017 French presidential election, for the term which expired on 13 May 2022. Macron became the first president of France to win a re-election bid since Jacques Chirac won in 2002.
Gérald Moussa Darmanin is a French politician who has been serving as Minister of the Interior in the governments of Prime Ministers Jean Castex, Élisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal since 2020.
Élisabeth Borne is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from May 2022 to January 2024. She is a member of President Emmanuel Macron's party Renaissance. Borne is the second woman to hold the position of Prime Minister after Édith Cresson, who served from 1991 to 1992.
The 15th legislature of the French Fifth Republic was the French Parliament that was in office from 27 June 2017 until 21 June 2022. The party of President Emmanuel Macron, La République En Marche! (LREM), obtained an absolute majority of 308 deputies, alongside its ally, the Democratic Movement (MoDem), which secured 42 seats. The newly-installed deputies elected François de Rugy as President of the National Assembly when the National Assembly first convened on 27 June. The legislative election saw a record level of renewal, with only a quarter of the deputies elected in 2012 also elected in 2017, as well as a significant increase in the representation of women and youth. With seven planned parliamentary groups, it would be the most fragmented National Assembly since 1958.
Gabriel Nissim Attal de Couriss is a French politician who has been Prime Minister of France since January 2024. As a member of the Renaissance party, Attal rapidly rose up the political ranks following his election to the National Assembly in June 2017. He became the Junior Minister to the Minister of National Education and Youth in 2018, which made him the youngest person to serve in the Government of France; the Spokesperson of the Government in 2020; the Minister of Public Action and Accounts in 2022; and the Minister of National Education and Youth in 2023.
Stéphane Séjourné is a French lawyer and politician of Renaissance who has been serving as Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal since 2024.
The Republican and Socialist Left is a socialist political party in France. It was founded on 3 February 2019 after the merger of the Alternative for a Republican, Ecologist and Socialist Program (APRÉS) and the Citizen and Republican Movement (MRC) of Jean-Luc Laurent and Jean-Pierre Chevènement. APRÉS had been founded in October 2018 by Emmanuel Maurel and Marie-Noëlle Lienemann after their departure from the Socialist Party and was close to La France Insoumise.
The New Ecological and Social People's Union was a left-wing electoral alliance of political parties in France. Formed on May Day 2022, the alliance included La France Insoumise (LFI), the Socialist Party (PS), the French Communist Party (PCF), The Ecologists (LE), Ensemble! (E!), and Génération.s (G.s), and their respective smaller partners. It was the first wide left-wing political alliance since the Plural Left in the 1997 French legislative election. Over 70 dissident candidates who refused the accord still ran.
Legislative elections were held in France on 30 June and 7 July 2024 to elect all 577 members of the 17th National Assembly of the Fifth French Republic. The election followed the dissolution of the National Assembly by President Emmanuel Macron, triggering a snap election after the National Rally (RN) made substantial gains and Macron's Besoin d'Europe electoral list lost a significant number of seats in the 2024 European Parliament election in France.
In December 2023, the Borne government faced a governability and credibility crisis. It was caused mainly by the difficult passage of the 2023 immigration and asylum bill, one of Emmanuel Macron's flagship manifesto commitments made during the 2022 presidential election.
The Sixth Republic is a potential successor to the present republican system in France, proposed as a solution to alleged issues of the current Fifth French Republic.
