Keyword: François Fillon

Alain Juppé and François Fillon also clashed over labour laws in live debate, three days ahead of the conservative presidential primary run-off.

Poll suggests former premier François Fillon will win Sunday's second round contest with 65 percent of votes against 35 percent for Alain Juppé.

François Fillon is favourite to be the Right's presidential candidate. © Reuters

The frontrunner in the primary election to become the presidential candidate for the French Right and centre is a known admirer of Britain's late prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who was dubbed the “Iron Lady”. His economic plans include a strategic and immediate “shock” to the French system; the end of the 35-hour working week, abolition of the wealth tax, increasing the retirement age to 65 and reforming unemployment benefit and workplace rights. As Martine Orange reports ahead of Sunday's crucial second round contest, François Fillon plans to introduce these sweeping changes within the first two months if he becomes president – despite the risk that they would provoke a recession.

His rival in Right's presidential primary, Alain Juppé, has urged Fillon to 'clarify his position' on abortion ahead of Sunday's decisive poll.

Ex-PM sets out plans, including cutting 500,000 public sector jobs, before runoff with Alain Juppé to be centre-right’s presidential candidate.

Race to be Right's candidate for president now between two ex-prime ministers who both want big public sector cuts and business incentives.

Former French prime minister François Fillon, previously trailing in the conservative opposition party's primaries to elect it candidate for presidential elections next spring, has suddenly taken a neck-and-neck position against his two main rivals, Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé, before voting begins on Sunday.

The main conservative opposition party's primaries to choose its candidate for the 2017 presidential elections, which begin Sunday evening amid more than usual interest because of the liklihood that the person chosen will reach the decisive second round next spring, is now a tight three-horse race.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, argues Foreign Affairs magazine, Russia is a hot topic in the French presidential campaign.

Under fire: Nicolas Sarkozy in Calais, September 21, 2016. © Reuters

For a long time Nicolas Sarkozy's former allies avoided personal attacks on the former president, even after they had become his political adversaries in the contest to choose the Right's presidential candidate for 2017. Now, however, the gloves are off and some on the Right are openly talking about the string of political and financial scandals in which the ex-president is currently embroiled. For the first time, report Ellen Salvi and Mathilde Mathieu, Sarkozy now looks politically vulnerable to the sheer weight of the scandals and criticism bearing down on him.

France's three surviving presidents (left to right): Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac. © Reuters

Mediapart has gained access to a detailed account of the annual payments made to former French presidents and prime ministers in a lifelong system of perks and privileges that beggars belief. With items ranging from newspaper and dry-cleaning costs to the payment of staff, offices and vehicles, the country’s three surviving former heads of state cost the taxpayer a yearly 6.2 million euros. Former prime ministers, meanwhile, receive tens of thousands of euros annually for staff and vehicles, including one who left office 25 years ago. Mathilde Mathieu reports.

The end of the regional elections in France last weekend was the starting gun for another contest – to choose the Right's candidate for the next presidential election. Already, ahead of this primary scheduled for the autumn of 2016, two clear ideological lines have emerged as have a host of competing candidates. Just one factor seems to unite them all and that is hostility towards their own leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is widely blamed for assisting the rise of the far-right Front National. Ellen Salvi reports.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Alain Juppé et François Fillon le 11 février © Reuters

The return of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to front-line politics in 2014 was supposed to breathe new life into the Right, bringing unity and cohesion ahead of the 2017 presidential election. Instead, a year later, the ex-president's political movement looks fractured, fractious and short on new ideas as political life resumes after the summer break. Ellen Salvi reports.

Jean-Pierre Jouyet is fighting demands for his resignation over his inconsistent comments regarding an alleged plot to scupper Nicolas Sarkozy.

Jean-Pierre Jouyet et François Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy et François Fillon © Reuters

The fallout from a private lunch between President François Hollande’s chief of staff Jean-Pierre Jouyet and former President Nicolas Sarkozy's prime minister François Fillon last summer is threatening to develop into a full-blown scandal. At the meeting on June 24th Fillon is said to have asked the socialist administration to speed up legal investigations into his former boss and now political rival Sarkozy. Jouyet, who served in Fillon's right-wing government but who is a close personal friend of Hollande, later told two journalists of the conversation. When the reporters published the story in a book last week Jouyet at first denied the claim then backtracked and insisted that Fillon had indeed asked him to intervene in the affair. Fillon, however, who like Sarkozy wants to be the Right's 2017 presidential candidate, has angrily accused Jouyet of “lies” and says he is suing for defamation. Once more, say Stéphane Alliès, Ellen Salvi and Mathieu Magnaudeix, the Elysée finds itself at the centre of an embarrassing affair, this time with the president’s right-hand man in the firing line.