Manuel Valls, who resigned in December to run in Socialist Party primaries to choose its presidential election candidate, was slapped to the face as he shook hands with a crowd of supporters in Lamballe, north-west France.
The four main contenders to be the official mainstream socialist candidate for the 2017 French presidential elections, Benoît Hamon, Arnaud Montebourg, Vincent Peillon and Manuel Valls, know each other extremely well. For more than 20 years the members of this quartet have occupied important positions and roles in the Socialist Party and were once hailed as a new generation destined to modernise the party. Now, having never been able to form lasting alliances among themselves, and having been 'blocked' by the generation above them, the four are all standing against each other in the party's primary to choose a candidate for the Elysée. Stéphane Alliès and Donatien Huet report on four politicians who have waited a long time for their chance to become president.
Manuel Valls on Monday announced he was resigning as French prime minister in order to run to become the socialist candidate in next year’s presidential elections. On the same day, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced his resignation following his heavy defeat in a referendum on his proposed constitutional reforms. In 2014, the two men trumpeted their shared vision of “modernising” the European Left. Mediapart editor François Bonnet argues why the fall of Renzi should sound alarm bells for Valls.
Formerly interior minister, Cazeneuve, 53, takes over as prime minister from Manuel Valls who on Monday resigned in order to launch his bid to become socialist candidate in presidential elections next spring.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, 54, has announced his resignation in order to stand in primary elections to choose his Socialist Party's candidate for next spring's presidential elections, following President François Hollande's decision last week not to stand.
Mediapart was present at a public meeting at Nanterre, west of Paris, to discuss the forthcoming presidential election when the news broke that President François Hollande would not be standing for re-election in that contest. Many of those present in the hall were supporters of the Left who had voted for Hollande at the 2012 election. Some were quick to voice their dismay at his presidency's record, while the majority expressed general indifference and the meeting quickly resumed. As Mathieu Magnaudeix reports, it was a sign of just how irrelevant the president had already become to many ordinary voters.
Under attack from within his own political camp, President François Hollande announced on Thursday night that he will not be standing for re-election in France's presidential elections next year. His decision, announced live on television, followed a period of high tension in the highest echelons of the state during which the head of state had come under fire from his own prime minister, Manuel Valls. Mediapart's Lénaïg Bredoux reports on what led the socialist president to take this momentous decision, the first time under France's Fifth Republic that a president has chosen not to seek a new term.
The crushing win in Sunday's conservative primary by former prime minister François Fillon shows that the French Right is not worried about its electoral opponents, writes Mediapart's Hubert Huertas. In choosing the most hardline candidate with the most radical austerity programme since the end of World War II, right-wing voters have delivered a message of supreme confidence. As far as they are concerned, it is as if left-wing opposition no longer exists. So how, he asks, will the French Left respond?
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, attending an aceonomic forum in Berlin on Thursday, said a far-right victory was possible in France's presidential elections next year and that 'Europe is in danger of falling apart', and called for strong leadership from France and Germany.
In an interview with the BBC, French Prime minister Manuel Valls has hinted that state of emergency powers, introduced after last year's Paris terrorist attacks, would be prolonged to next spring when the country holds presidential and parliamentary elections.
