French presidential election campaign

Earlier this week, a meeting was organised by 45 feminist groups to which candidates in the French presidential elections were invited to explain their plans for advancing the cause of equality for women. For when it comes to equal wages for equal work, fighting sexism and violence against women and promoting contraception, women’s access to positions of power and responsibility, parity in the political arena or on company boards, or the question of Muslim women wearing the veil, the commitments vary across the French political spectrum.Sophie Courval reports.

While French politics continues to be a man's world, the pressure mounts on presidential candidates to take a clear initiative to introduce parity.

François Hollande's partner Valérie Trierweiler has expressed fury at being splashed on the front page of Paris Match magazine, her employer.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he will quit politics if he loses his re-election bid in elections that begin in April.

Everything is now set in place for Nicolas Sarkozy to lose the 2012 presidential elections, argues Mediapart editor François Bonnet, who says his performance on French television this week confirmed the picture presented since the president finally announced his re-election bid in early February. Just like outgoing French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1981, he will fail to be re-elected, and essentially for two reasons.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was forcied to take shelter in a bar as he campaigned in the Basque country ahead of April's presidential election.

French Socialist Party presidential candidate François Hollande has promised to tax those who annually earn above 1 million euros at 75% of income.

A slew of corruption scandals on French Socialist Party turf have become an unwelcome distraction for its candidate François Hollande.

France's Constitutional Court rules that names of mandatory mayoral backers for Far Right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen must be made public.

As Nicolas Sarkozy strives in his re-election campaign to shed a flashy image, his wife Carla Bruni appeared to be undergoing a reverse makeover.

French newspapers broadly round on President Nicolas Sarkozy's first major re-election bid speech as long on patriotism but short on policy.

Nicolas Sarkozy defended his unpopular policies as insulating France from the debt crisis in a nationalistic re-election campaign speech in Marseille.

Incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party candidate François Hollande accuse each other of lies and manipulation.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has formally declared he will stand for re-election in the two-round polling staged in April and May.