Commentator turned politician Raphael Glucksmann was on Sunday expected to announce his candidacy for France\u2019s presidential election next year, entering a field that is crowded even just within his left-wing spectrum.<\/p>\n
Former essayist Glucksmann, 46, a European parliament deputy who leads the centre-left party Place Publique, is expected to use a prime time interview from 1800 GMT on TF1 television to declare he is standing.<\/p>\n
His move is expected to have the immediate consequence that his partner the journalist Lea Salame, a top news reader on rival public France 2 TV, will announce she is stepping aside to avoid any conflict of interest in the campaign.<\/p>\n
Far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen scents her best ever chance of winning the Elysee but a host of candidates in the centrist camp of President Emmanuel Macron, who is not allowed to serve another term, as well as the left have announced they will be contenders.<\/p>\n
Hard left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is planning to stand while Greens leader Marine Tondelier is campaigning while pregnant and Socialist Party (PS) leader Olivier Faure and even possibly ex-president Francois Hollande are mulling runs.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Georgia connection \u2013<\/p>\n
Polls give Glucksmann, who is popular among young people in what some term \u201cGlucksmania\u201d, 10-12 percent of the vote, a creditable score but likely not enough to make a second round run-off.<\/p>\n
To avoid too much dilution of the vote, the Socialists and Place Publique are planning to hold a primary in October to find a single candidate.<\/p>\n
While Glucksmann strikes a more reformist and centrist tone than the PS, it is in his interest to work with the venerable party and benefit from its campaign machine.<\/p>\n
The son of philosopher Andre Glucksmann, he served from 2009-2013, while still a young tousle-haired idealist, as advisor to the strongly pro-Western former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili.<\/p>\n
Now in jail in his home country, Saakashvili was a staunch foe of Russia after the 2008 war between the two nations.<\/p>\n
As well as a champion of Europe who abhors the far-right, Glucksmann is a strong supporter of Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.<\/p>\n
Beirut-born Salame, 46, had already acknowledged she would step aside from her job she has held since 2025 presenting the flagship news show if her partner stood for president.<\/p>\n
But she has insisted she remains objective. \u201cI am an independent, honest journalist \u2014 a free woman,\u201d she said in February, while acknowledging questions about their personal and professional situation were \u201clegitimate\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Commentator turned politician Raphael Glucksmann was on Sunday expected to announce his candidacy for France\u2019s presidential election next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,194,15490],"class_list":["post-68668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-france","tag-international","tag-mna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}