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Reader question: Who runs Paris while Hidalgo runs for French presidency?

The news that Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has formally launched her bid to become president of France in 2022 has sparked all sorts of political analysis, but one reader asked us who runs Paris in the meantime?

Published: 15 September 2021 16:39 CEST
Reader question: Who runs Paris while Hidalgo runs for French presidency?
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. Photo: Patrick Herzog/AFP

Question: I live in Paris and I’m quite supportive of Hidalgo’s policies here, especially in regards to cycling, so I was interested to see that she’s standing for the presidency. But I do wonder, who will be running things in Paris while she’s off campaigning?

Being a mayor is a well-worn stepping stone towards taking power at a national level, Jacques Chirac was mayor of Paris before ascending to the presidency in 1995, while previous presidents including François Mitterand and François Hollande have also served as mayors. 

It’s also quite common for politicians to flip between roles at a local and national level – previous Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was Mayor of Le Havre before he was appointed PM, at which point he gave up the mairie, before standing again and winning in July 2020 as he ended the PM role.

His successor Jean Castex was the mayor of Prades in south west France when he was appointed PM.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin served as mayor of Tourcoing in north east France. He gave up the mayor’s role when he joined the government and instead became deputy mayor, but in June 2021 stood and was elected in departmental elections in Tourcoing.

According to his Twitter feed, he’s available on request to perform weddings in Tourcoing (a standard function for local officials).

Holding multiple roles is known as cumul de mandats (accumulation of mandates) in French and in recent years the rules have been tightened up on this, ensuring that people cannot hold too many roles at the same time – before 2017 it was common for mayors elected to national office to hold onto their role and simply appoint a deputy.

The president is not permitted to hold any other office during their time at the Elysée, although they do hold the ceremonial role of Co-Prince of Andorra.

Other politicians face limits on the mandates they can hold, with certain role being incompatible, including that of mayor of a town of more than 3,500 inhabitants with a national office.

The above only applies to politicians once they are elected, and it is usual for candidates to hang on to their current role during the campaign – the obvious example being a president seeking re-election who combines running the country with his or her own election campaign (Emmanuel Macron has so far not confirmed whether he will stand in 2022  although it is widely expected that he will).

If Hidalgo is elected as president – and current polling suggests she will not be – she will have to give up being Mayor of Paris, but during the election campaign she is highly likely to hold on to the role, with support in the day-to-day running of things from her current team.

Her deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire, is widely regarded as her successor should she choose to step down for any reason before her current term as mayor ends in 2026.

Speaking to Le Figaro, Grégoire assured readers that Hidalgo remains “fully mayor of Paris” while conceding that he will “have work to do”. 

He added: “She knows my loyalty; I know her trust.”

Do you have a question on any aspect of life in France? Email us at [email protected] and we will do our best to answer it.

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

Published: 26 June 2024 08:15 CEST
French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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