On Sunday, Dominique de Villepin told the media he wants to be a candidate and is fighting for it, dismissing a presidential primary as “the latest gimmick for the desperate.” He also accused Édouard Philippe of playing into Marine Le Pen’s hands with tougher migration proposals for Mayotte.
The seventy-two-year-old former prime minister has spent the past year building a movement, La France Humaniste, ahead of next spring’s race. His declaration comes as France searches for a presidential heir Emmanuel Macron cannot supply, since the constitution bars a third term.
A Republic Without an Heir
Villepin’s opening line responds to a vacancy few in Paris expected to stay so open for so long. Macron’s second term produced a snap parliamentary dissolution after the European elections two years ago.
The churn of governments since, including Sébastien Lecornu’s return to Matignon, has left the presidential centre without a settled heir. Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe, former prime ministers under Macron, already compete for the same electorate of moderate, pro-European voters.
Politicians whose careers began decades earlier now step into the gap, having served under presidents long departed from office.
Philippe, who leads the Horizons party, used a rally in Tourcoing hosted by Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin to unveil his own restrictive proposals for Mayotte, prompting Villepin’s rebuke.
Attal, Macron’s youngest prime minister, has left open the possibility of a primary himself, a suggestion more than two hundred elected officials endorsed in a column published in Le Figaro. The jostling confirms a fractured presidential camp with no single line of succession.
The Veteran’s Case for Return
Villepin, the most advanced of these veteran contenders, brings a record rivals lack. His opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, delivered before the United Nations as foreign minister, still defines his public identity two decades on. He revived the stance earlier this year, cautioning against foreign intervention in Iran, and criticised Macron directly for submitting to pressure from Washington.
Villepin founded La France Humaniste last summer, styling himself a Gaullist recours, a figure above party lines who can gather voters exhausted by the extremes crowding French politics.
Villepin’s foreign-policy pitch draws force from Macron’s own record. The president has spent recent years courting Gulf capital and security partnerships. He recently welcomed Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to Paris for a new strategic council binding French energy and defence interests to Riyadh for decades.
Villepin frames the embrace as commerce dressed as diplomacy, a line meant to distinguish his own sovereigntist instincts from Macron’s transactional style. Sympathisers respond to the framing; a broader electorate has not tested it so far.
A History of Falling Short
Villepin’s appeal to tradition sits alongside a thin electoral record. He has never won an election, reaching the premiership by presidential appointment in 2005. His previous presidential bid collapsed in 2012, falling roughly thirty signatures short of the five hundred endorsements French law requires from elected officials.
His government also withdrew a flagship labour reform in 2006 after weeks of student protest forced Chirac’s hand. So far, he claims to have obtained several hundred endorsements, well short of the geographically spread five hundred French candidacy rules demand.
The gap between ambition and paperwork has undone him once already, and 2027 offers no guarantee of a different outcome.
Crowded Company on the Right
Villepin is not alone in looking backward for an answer. François Hollande, also seventy-two and president from 2012 to 2017, is weighing a comeback of his own.
Each entered public life under presidents most French voters now recall only from history lessons, and each now courts an electorate weary after years without a settled government.
Their emergence lays bare a party system hollowed out since Macron’s first campaign, leaving familiar names as the only brand voters still recognise.
The stirring among Republic veterans has not touched the National Rally’s advantage in the polls. An appeals court in July upheld Marine Le Pen’s embezzlement conviction, reduced her ban from office, and cleared her to stand after all. She and her deputy Jordan Bardella have polled between 31% and 36% for months, a share no centrist or Gaullist name approaches.
Old Guard’s Long Odds
An old guard’s return still carries force, even against those odds. French presidential races have rewarded late outsiders before, and a splintered first round could send an unexpected pair through to the runoff.
Villepin’s appeal to unity above party lines might consolidate voters repelled by Le Pen and unconvinced by Macron’s chosen heirs. Such an outcome depends on securing his signatures before the Socialist primary produces a stronger centre-left rival.
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