Former PM Philippe launches presidential campaign to take on far right in France

 

Former PM Philippe launches presidential campaign to take on far right in France

 

Polls suggest Édouard Philippe is the best-placed candidate to beat favorites Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen.

 

May 10, 2026 6:52 pm CET

By Clea Caulcutt

https://www.politico.eu/article/edouard-philippe-president-campaign-france-election/

 

REIMS, France  — France’s center-right former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe on Sunday launched his campaign for next year’s presidential election, in which he is the leading contender to stop the far-right National Rally.

 

At a rally in the northeastern city of Reims in Champagne country, he unveiled his electoral team, his campaign calendar and party priorities.

 

Promising his campaign would map out a “massively optimistic” vision for France, Philippe gathered officials and elected representatives from his Horizons party to chart how he plans to beat far-right leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella — the current favorites in the polls.

 

“I’m going to make proposals, proposals that will unite others: a clear, ambitious, precise and realistic platform and it will be massive,” Philippe told several hundred Horizons delegates.

 

“This is a new phase of the presidential campaign,” the mayor of the northern port of Le Havre continued. “We will have to go beyond the frontiers of our party … open up and go further.”

 

Philippe said hard choices were necessary but insisted these would give the French a more positive outlook on a changing world. “Don’t let yourselves be stultified by pessimists and those with a declinist world view,” he said.

 

Three figures are set to take the head of Philippe’s election campaign team: former minister and current Mayor of Angers Christophe Béchu, former minister Marie Guévenoux (as first reported by POLITICO) and MEP Gilles Boyer.

 

“Our obsession is to unite,” Béchu said after the rally. “This is a new phase, [Philippe] is saying: ‘I’m not only the president of Horizons, but a candidate who will unite all the French.’”

 

Philippe also announced he would hold his first campaign rally in Paris on July 5, as well as a national campaign day at the end of June, with 1,000 small-scale campaign gatherings planned.

 

Philippe has in recent weeks faced accusations he was being too quiet and running an overly low-profile campaign.

 

According to early polling, he looked to be comfortably the best-placed centrist candidate to beat the far right in the next presidential election. But more recent polling suggested his lead over former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and conservative leader Bruno Retailleau was narrowing. Both been campaigning hard to overtake Philippe.

 

During his hour-long speech in Reims, Philippe sketched out his aims for the campaign, hitting several conservative hot-button topics: lowering taxes on turnover for French companies, slashing red tape, rebalancing the state pension system and fighting crime and drug trafficking.

 

According to party officials, one of Philippe’s short-term objectives will be to unite the center right around his candidacy, and particularly the conservatives, before trying to widen his appeal.

 

“I came from the right … I’m not going to apologize,” said Philippe, who is a former member of the conservative Les Républicains party. “And I know where I am, at the head of a rightwing party, and the mayor of Le Havre, a working-class city … that shows that ideas of freedom and responsibility aren’t only the domain of the right-wing electorate.”

 

In the coming months, the party is hoping for several heavyweights from rival parties to back Philippe, which would put pressure on Attal and Retailleau, said a Horizons lawmaker.

 

“It needs to be sorted out by Christmas,” said the lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal politics. “Everything has to be ready by the end of the year to face off candidacies from the National Rally and [far-left Jean-Luc] Mélenchon.”

 

At the rally on Sunday, Philippe also lashed out at both the far right and the far-left France Unbowed of Mélenchon accusing them of selling lies and “dangerous ideas” to the French.

 

“Look at what the U.S. president, whom Mr. Bardella so admires, is doing to the buying power of the American middle classes through his tariffs and his wars in the Middle East,” he said.

 

“Populism always backfires on the people.”

 

His speech however remained short of details, particularly on the explosive topics such as France’s legal age of retirement and how he planned to cut public spending.

 

He vowed, however, that he would make proposals in the coming months.

 

This article has been updated.