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How can you run for the presidency in France?

One day you're casually reading The Local. The next, you're governing France. Here's what you need to do to get your name onto the presidential ballot.

Published: 20 November 2021 12:31 CET
French President Emmanuel Macron waves from the stairs of the Elysee Palace.
French President Emmanuel Macron waves from the stairs of the Elysee Palace. We explain the requirements that candidates must fulfil take his place. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

Becoming the President of France carries a number of perks. Besides the €100,000 annual salary, you also automatically become the Co-Prince of Andorra and the Grand Master of the Legion of Honour.

The president’s salary is a matter of public record, but you may also have to face being quizzed about it by schoolchildren, as in this video.

Perhaps more importantly, French presidents wield significant power in a political system which is weighed heavily towards the executive branch. 

Presidential hopefuls in France need to meet certain requirements to get their names onto the ballot sheet, to stand a chance of legally winning power. We break them down for you here: 

French citizenship and age restriction

Firstly, presidential candidates must hold French citizenship and be over the age of 18. Equally, you cannot run if you are under legal guardianship or if you have been barred for doing so because of various tax offenses. 

You do not, however, need to have been born a French citizen or born in France in order to be eligible. The Norwegian-born Eva Joly ran for president as the Green party candidate in 2012. 

You can read our guide to becoming a French citizen here. 

National service

Anyone hoping to win the keys to the Elysée must have fulfilled national service requirements – either through the military or other civic duties.

National service has changed in France over time – and each individual’s circumstances influence whether or not they must meet this requirement. 

READ ALSO Holiday or boot camp? Young people in France brace for national service

Compulsory national service was scrapped in 1996 for all citizens born after December 31st 1978. In theory, anyone hoping to stand as a candidate, who was born before this date, must have met their national service obligations as required by law. 

Macron reintroduced national service on a voluntary basis in 2019 and has suggested that the scheme may become compulsory in the future. This means that presidential candidates of the future would probably have to have fulfilled either some kind of military or civic duties. 

500 signatures

French presidential candidates must have gathered 500 signatures of support from elected officials such as mayors, senators, MPs and councillors. 

These signatures must be drawn from at least 30 different départements, with no more than 50 signatures coming from the same one. An elected official can only give issue a signature of support to one candidate. Perplexingly, local officials can give their signatures to people who have not even declared their intention to run.  

READ ALSO Every fact you need to know about France’s ‘départements’

The purpose of this system is to ensure that candidates have at least some level of support across the country before entering the race. Some critics say it is undemocratic because it limits opportunities for people outside of the established political class. 

A law passed in 2016 meant that the Constitutional Council is obliged to publish a complete list detailing who elected officials give their signature to. This means that many local officials are afraid to offer signatures of support out of fear of alienating their own voter base. In 2017, only 34 percent of elected officials offered their signature to hopeful candidates. 

Potential candidates have up until the sixth Friday before the first round of the election to collect the required signatures. 

Declaration of interests 

Candidates must submit a declaration of their financial investments and debts to the Constitutional Council. The law now states that these declarations are made public before the first round of voting – which happened for the first time in 2017. 

You can read Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 declaration here. To give you an idea of his wealth, the current president’s life insurance policy was worth nearly €92,000 at the time.

READ ALSO Who’s who in the crowded field vying to unseat Macron in French presidential election

A new declaration must be issued before the end of the president’s term. 

Campaign financing records must be handed over to a national commission within two months of the passing of the election. In September, former president Nicolas Sarkozy was given a one-year sentence for breaking campaign finance rules in the 2012 election. 

The Journal Officiel 

Once all the requirements requirements are met and verified by the Constitutional Council, an official list of candidates is published in the Journal Officiel – the French government gazette. 

So far, at least 30 people have declared that they will stand as candidates in the 2022 presidential election. But the strict requirements detailed above mean that only a limited selection of them will make it onto the official ballot. 

In 2017, only eleven candidates made it onto the list, out of close to 61 people who received at least one signature of support. 

It’s not a formal requirement, but the record to date suggests that being male and white will probably help your chances – France has never had a female or a non-white president.

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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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