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.
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: lowering taxes on turnover for French companies, reducing France’s public deficit, rebalancing the state pension system and fighting crime and drug trafficking.
Philippe lashed out at both the National Rally and the far-left France Unbowed of Jean-Luc 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.
Former PM Philippe launches presidential campaign to take on far right in France
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