PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. Discover the list of the 12 candidates for the 2022 presidential election with program summaries and professions of faith downloadable in PDF…
[Mis à jour le 9 avril 2022 à 8h25] This Sunday, April 10, two people among the twelve candidates for the presidential election will be designated to compete on April 24, in order to become the next or the next President of the Republic. The twelve contenders for the supreme mandate have unveiled their programs and their professions of faith, as well as campaign clips, in which they propose their project for the next five-year term.
If the candidates for this presidential election are numerous, we can say that the campaign does not seem to excite the French. According to a survey by the Elabe Institute published on March 30, 63% of our fellow citizens judged the campaign to be of poor quality. This disinterest could well be felt at the polls on Sunday. Another poll, conducted by Ipsos, indicates that 69% of French people say they are sure to vote this Sunday. If such an abstention score is reached, it would be a record for a presidential election. So far, the highest abstention observed dates back to 2002, with 28.4% abstention in the first round.
The distribution of professions of faith will also have been laborious at the end of this presidential campaign. Some households had still not received them this Friday, the last day of the official campaign. Some envelopes may not arrive on time, such as during regional and departmental elections. La Poste, which had until Saturday April 9 to fulfill this mission, is undergoing a social movement as this distribution significantly overloads the work of the staff. For the National Commission for the Control of the Electoral Campaign for the Presidential Election (CNCCEP), this distribution is nevertheless “well advanced”. “The distribution times observed for the presidential election of 2022 are in line with the deadlines usually observed, taking into account the regulatory deadlines”, indicated the authority on Twitter in the middle of the week. La Poste and the Ministry of the Interior, which published a joint press release on Wednesday, indicated for their part that “the distribution of electoral propaganda by La Poste for the first round of the presidential election is taking place in accordance with the planned schedule”. If you have not yet received the professions of faith of the presidential candidates, you can download them in PDF on the CNCCEP websiteor under the candidate program summaries below.
What are the programs of the presidential candidates?
Emmanuel Macron (The Republic on the March): the Head of State has never indicated that he would be satisfied with a single mandate, his relatives have even been made aware of how to prepare the ground to launch a new campaign for 2022. For several months the signals have been multiplying going in the direction of a candidacy that Emmanuel Macron would no doubt like to see succeed as a new duel against the far right. Although he very easily received the necessary sponsorships, the President of the Republic did not declare himself officially until late and aspires to carry out a new mandate.
Marine Le Pen (National Rally): the president of the National Rally had let it be known on January 16, 2020 that her “decision was made”: the RN Congress, which was held in July 2021, allowed her to confirm her ambitions. Marine Le Pen is therefore officially a candidate for her third presidential election and her qualification for the second round is often presented as very probable by the polls. Like her father, she campaigned for the inclusion of national preference in the Constitution. It promotes retirement at age 60 as well as an “evolution of taxation on gifts and inheritances”. Despite her many criticisms of the sponsorship system, she landed the minimum number to collect in order to run.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise): his wish to be a candidate was formulated at the end of 2020, realized after passing the barrier of 150,000 citizen signatures that he had set himself to compete. He reiterated his ambitions on July 1, calling himself the political “rock in the landscape”, and launching a so-called “popular union” campaign. Obtaining 500 sponsorships from elected officials, the leader of LFI, who since the collapse of the Socialist Party has embodied an alternative to the left, more dissenting, is once again a candidate for the Elysée. Jean-Luc Mélenchon participated twice in the presidential election, obtaining 19.58% of the vote in the first round in 2017, arriving just behind François Fillon.
Eric Zemmour (Reconquest!): he imposed himself on the media and political landscape in just a few weeks. From a very popular columnist on CNews, Eric Zemmour has gone on to become a presidential candidate. The polemicist made it official in a video broadcast on Youtube on November 30, 2021. A novice in politics, a candidate for the presidential election outside of any historical and traditional political party, Éric Zemmour repeated over and over again for weeks that he encountered difficulties in collecting sponsorship from elected officials. But he landed the minimum 500 within the time limit.
Valérie Pécresse (The Republicans): the president of the Free Party! emerged victorious from the right-wing primary organized within the Les Républicains party. “Restore French pride”, this is what the president of the Île-de-France region promises through a program ranging from school, where the number of hours of French and mathematics must increase, to the will of “restore order”, through a 10% net increase in wages. Candidate for the first time in the presidential election, Valérie Pécresse encountered no difficulty in collecting the minimum number of sponsorships. His will have been due to his quality as a former minister but also as president of the Île-de-France region, attached to a historic political formation (Les Républicains) which has thousands of elected officials throughout the country, enabled him to cross this step smoothly.
Yannick Jadot (Europe Ecology – The Greens): the short-lived presidential candidate of 2017, who then lined up behind Benoît Hamon, announced on June 30 that he was running for president, via the EELV primary in September. Head of the list who arrived third in the 2019 Europeans, he was invested by the vote organized by environmentalists, in September, to get out of nuclear power, invest in bio, set up the seven-year term or even create a citizen income. Yannick Jadot has, without a hitch, obtained the necessary sponsorships, despite a campaign that is struggling to take off.
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Stand up France): for the president of Debout la France, the presidential election is an unmissable event, since his party, which has almost no elected representatives in France, is built for national elections. After obtaining 4.70% of the vote in 2017, he joined forces with Marine Le Pen in the second round. For this new election, he wants to “restore order, relocate productions, rebuild our public services”, but also “renegotiate the European treaties”. The sovereigntist candidate has 500 sponsorships.
Fabien Roussel (Communist Party): national secretary of the PCF since 2018, he will live his baptism of fire in the spring of 2022. While the PCF had not presented a candidate in 2017, lining up behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Fabien Roussel was already invested in May 2021 by his left. He built a program following a public consultation launched in September 2019. He collected more than 500 sponsorships.
John Lassalle (Let’s resist): already a solo candidate in 2017 (1.21% in the first round), the former traveling companion of François Bayrou, renowned for his staggered outings in the Assembly and in the media, also spoke out for 2022. Confirmed candidate of rurality, Jean Lassalle says this time that he wants to embody “joy”, despite the crisis. He has, without a hitch, won the 500 signatures.
Anne Hidalgo (Socialist Party): the mayor of Paris is a candidate in the presidential election, supported by the Socialist Party, which however organized a consultation of activists in mid-October. The elected representative wishes to carry “a project which brings together around the values of the Republic”, as part of a “humanist, republican and ecological” left. Despite very low voting intentions, the task was not very complicated for Anne Hidalgo. Invested by a formation which still has a good number of elected officials in the various institutions of the Republic, the mayor of Paris easily obtained the number of signatures necessary.
Philippe Poutou (New Anti-Capitalist Party): he had made a strong impression during the campaign in 2017, especially during the first round debate, not hesitating to throw many spades against François Fillon, Marine Le Pen or Emmanuel Macron. The former candidate for the Elysee Palace, who also ran in 2012, was appointed by the NPA to wear the colors of the movement in 2022.
Nathalie Arthaud (Workers struggle): Lutte Ouvrière candidate since the departure of Arlette Laguiller (0.64% of the vote in 2017), Nathalie Arthaud is back for the presidency of 2022. The spokesperson for the far left party is in her third race for the Elysée to embody the “revolutionary communist current”. After obtaining the endorsement of LO at the 50th party congress in December 2020, Nathalie Arthaud obtained her 500 sponsorships.
Michel Barnier, Xavier Bertrand, Eric Ciotti, Philippe Juvin, Christiane Taubira, Stéphane Le Foll, Arnaud Montebourg, Eric Piolle, Delphine Batho, Sandrine Rousseau, Florian Philippot, Gérard Filoche, Anna Agueb-Porterie, Charlotte Marchandise, Pierre Larrouturou, Jean- Frédéric Poisson or Jacline Mouraud… The number of declared contenders for this 2022 presidential election will have been gigantic, undoubtedly breaking a record in the Fifth Republic. Many are those who will not have passed the obstacle of a primary or the sponsorships necessary to compete.