Éric Zemmour, leader of France’s right-wing Reconquête party, has formally announced that he will run in the country’s presidential election, the first round of which is scheduled for April 18, 2027 with a run-off two weeks later.
Speaking on TF1’s evening news bulletin on November 10, Zemmour said he was standing so that France would remain French and its future would be French, which he described as the essential point. He argued that no other candidate or programme was capable of halting the country’s decline.
The 68-year-old former journalist had already said on September 17, in an interview with BFMTV, that he would seek the presidency. His entourage stressed at the time that this was not yet a formal declaration, according to French media.
Immigration dominated his pitch. Zemmour defended what he calls negative immigration, with more people leaving France than arriving, and said he wanted two million fewer immigrants in the country by the end of a five-year term.
This will be his second run for the Élysée. In 2022, he finished fourth in the first round with 7.07 per cent of the vote and then called on his supporters to back Marine Le Pen, candidate of the National Rally (RN), in the run-off against Emmanuel Macron.
Relations between the two parties have since soured. In an interview with Spanish news agency Europa Press in May, Zemmour flatly ruled out any dialogue with the RN before the presidential vote and said each party would go its own way.
On TF1, he accused Le Pen, who is once again the RN’s candidate, of failing to fight what he called the “great replacement” and of rejecting a union of the Right. He told viewers that those who wanted such a union should vote for Reconquête to put it in first place and in a position to impose that alliance on the others.
The polls point to an uphill struggle. A survey by Elabe published on July 11 credited Zemmour with between 2.5 and 3.5 per cent of first-round voting intentions, with Le Pen clearly in the lead.
To appear on the ballot, he would first need to collect 500 sponsorships from elected officials spread across at least 30 departments or overseas territories.
Zemmour has also been a vocal critic of the European Union’s approach to migration, attacking the bloc’s Pact on Migration and Asylum and accusing EU institutions of backing mass immigration for ideological reasons. Reconquête sits in the European Parliament with the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group.