From the French revolution to the Paris commune and the May ’68 student protests, images of a radical, progressive France have permeated global attitudes and preconceptions of the country, especially in the English-speaking world. 

But throughout history France’s most revolutionary moments have tended to be followed by a conservative backlash, while more modern history has provided plenty of success for politicians from the right.

So how left-wing is modern France?

Public opinion

Let’s start with a caveat – placing people or political ideas on the spectrum of ‘left’ or ‘right’ is an imprecise science and often varies from country to country.

So we’ll begin by looking at how the French describe themselves – and research shows that more see themselves as being on the right than on the left.

A 2021 study by progressive think-tank, Fondapol, comparing political views across European countries found that 38 percent of French people placed themselves somewhere on the right politically, while 24 percent identified as being on the left and another 21 percent said they did not know.

In comparison to other European countries, France did not stand out as particularly left-wing – 44 percent of Italians identified as right-wing, and 31 percent said they were left-wing; 40 percent of Brits said they were on the right, while 25 percent said they were on the left.

There has also been a steady rise of far-right affiliation in the recent years. In the past decade, the far-right politician Marine Le Pen has made it to the second-round of the French presidential election twice. 

Since 2017, the proportion of French people identifying as on the right side of the political spectrum has gone up from 33 percent to 38 percent (in 2021).

Meanwhile, left-wing identification remained stable, going from 25 percent in 2017 to 24 percent in 2021.

Political power and presidents

The French left has held power just twice since the start of France’s Fifth Republic.

After decades of flipping back and fourth between republic, monarchy and empire, the Fifth Republic began in 1958 and shifted the concentration of power from parliament to the presidency, at the behest of WWII resistance leader and later president Charles de Gaulle.

The modern French president is elected to a five-year term, and in office they are the Head of State, head of the armed forces, can dissolve parliament, organise referenda, appoint government ministers (including the prime minister), control foreign policy and ratify treaties. 

Since 1958, France has had eight presidents, and so far only two of them have come from the political left: François Mitterrand (1981-1995) and François Hollande (2012-2017). 

Current president Emmanuel Macron describes himself as being ‘neither left nor right’, but he did begin his political career as a minister in the government of left-winger Hollande (although many feel that he has moved to the right since taking office in 2017). 

In terms of parliament, usually the president’s party enjoys a majority in the legislature – meaning that for the majority of the Fifth Republic, there has been a right-leaning parliament.

However, there have been three incidents when the the president of the Republic is from one party, but the parliamentary majority is made up of the opposing party, causing a ‘cohabitation‘.

Two of these incidents happened under Mitterand, forcing him to share power with conservative prime ministers for four years out of his 14-year tenure.

The French left took the reins during one of those cohabitation, between 1997–2002, when the socialist Lionel Jospin was Prime Minister under right-winger Jacques Chirac. Jospin managed to push through several social reforms, including introducing a 35-hour working week despite Chirac’s objections, as well as universal health insurance. 

The big-state apparatus

For many people hailing from the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ world, the biggest ‘leftist’ aspect of France is the country’s generous social welfare system and a large and far-reaching central government.

When compared to its European neighbours, however, France is not particularly progressive on social welfare issues.

Most EU countries offer at least 20 days of paid annual leave, on top of public holidays – French workers get 25 days of statutory holiday a year, the same as Norway and Sweden.

As far as parental leave goes, France does not come out on top in the European charts. It is not as generous in terms of time as Germany, which offers up to 14 months of leave, nor is it as gender-equal as Sweden, which offers parents 16 months divided equally between the mother and father.

And generally – in contrast to bitter debates in the United States – universal healthcare, paid family leave and child benefits are largely uncontroversial in France. 

While left-wing governments have brought in changes like the abolition of the death penalty, a reduction in working hours, creating more public funding for radio, television and culture, several policies that might end up on the left-wing economically have been brought in under right-wing governments.

In the 1970s, the centre-right French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing oversaw the expansion of the state-owned railway service SNCF through its high-speed rail network. He also promoted nuclear power, managed via largely-state owned electricity provider, EDF.

It was under the right-winger Georges Pompidou that France instituted a minimum wage.

French sociologist, Robert Sue, wrote a column in Le Monde prior to the 2022 presidential election, hoping to explain the phenomenon. He called France “a left wing country that votes for the right.”

“Overwhelming majorities believe that the economy benefits bosses to the detriment of workers, that the government should take from the rich and give to the poor, that there are too many immigrants in France and that unemployed people can find a job if they look for one,” Sue wrote. 

Social issues

If we take ‘big state’ government as an indicator of being on the left, then France is pretty leftist. But when looking at social issues traditionally associated with the left, the picture is somewhat different.

For example, France was slow to grant women the right to vote compared to other wealthy, industrialised nations.

American women got the vote in 1920, and British women gained equal voting rights in 1928. Meanwhile, French women were barred from voting from 1791 to 1945.

As for abortion, former Soviet countries gained legal access in 1955 and British law clarified the legality of on-demand abortion in 1967. Abortion became legal in France in 1975, the same year as Sweden.

Over time, abortion has become significantly less controversial across the political spectrum, so much so that it was enshrined in France’s constitution in 2024, with over 80 percent of the public supporting the right.

As for LGBT rights – France passed same-sex marriage in 2013, making it the 14th country in the world and ninth European country to do so. The Netherlands made gay marriage legal 12 years before France.

A little more than half of French people supported the legalisation of same-sex marriage at the time (53 percent, according to CSA survey). This had increased to 82 percent by 2023, according to US News and World Report, but France was not the most progressive country in the list. It fell behind Sweden (92 percent), the Netherlands (89 percent), and Spain (87 percent).

When it comes to ideological stances, French people may not fit into traditional American or British conceptions of ‘right versus left’ wing, as evidenced by the anti-neoliberal Yellow Vest movement, which got support from both far right and far left leaders Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The Fondapol study found that over half of French people – 63 percent, more than Germans, Italians and British people – believed their country should be more closed to migration. For those in the right-wing bloc, 81 percent believed that ‘Islam represents a threat to the Republic’. A significant portion of people on the left felt this way too – almost half, or 45 percent.

Unionisation and striking

France’s famous strikes are often what foreigners think of when placing the country on the political spectrum.

It is true that France has either the highest or the second-highest number of days lost to strike action in the EU (depending on which data you use) – with an average of 60 strike days per 1,000 workers. Meanwhile the right to strike is enshrined in the country’s constitution.

However, French union membership is significantly lower than its European counterparts, with just eight percent of French workers official union members.

In comparison, union membership in Italy stands at 34 percent, in the UK at 23 percent and in Germany at 17 percent.

Nevertheless – French trade unions do hold political power, helping the political left to stretch its muscles even without a strong electoral mandate. This is especially visible when it comes to getting people out onto the street to protest, as seen in the recent pensions protests of 2019 and 2023.

Bruno Palier, a research director at Sciences Po university in Paris told Euronews: “During every protest in the past there was either an abandonment or an amendment; concessions were made to the various unions which had mobilised.”

It’s also widely assumed that the threat of widespread strikes and street violence causes French leaders to think carefully before attempting to curtail the rights or benefits of the workers.