{"id":7595,"date":"2026-04-20T09:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T09:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7595\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T09:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T09:09:32","slug":"french-conservative-leader-retailleau-gets-party-backing-for-presidential-bid-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7595\/","title":{"rendered":"French conservative leader Retailleau gets party backing for presidential bid \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Manfred Weber, president of the center-right European People\u2019s Party and leader of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, congratulated the candidate and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ManfredWeber\/status\/2046114827777479147\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">said<\/a> the \u201ccourse has been set to unite the party and prepare for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Les R\u00e9publicains, the historic home of French conservatism, has been locked out of power since 2012, when former President Nicolas Sarkozy lost his reelection bid to the Socialist Fran\u00e7ois Hollande. Since then, the party has lost hundreds of elected officials and tens of thousands of party members.<\/p>\n<p>A former interior minister <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/bruno-retailleau-france-presidential-election-les-republicains\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">and hard-liner<\/a> on topics such as immigration and policing, Retailleau saw his political star rise while serving in cabinet, but his popularity has declined since he exited the government. Recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commission-des-sondages.fr\/notices\/files\/notices\/2026\/mars\/10166-pres-elabe-28-mars.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">polls<\/a> for the first round of the French presidential election, which will take place in about a year, show Les R\u00e9publicains\u2019 leader securing less than 10 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>That figure puts him substantially behind both the far-right National Rally, which is polling above 30 percent, and his main center-right rival, former Prime Minister <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/former-french-pm-edouard-philippe-fortifies-presidential-bid-with-strong-showing-in-municipal-race-le-havre\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u00c9douard Philippe<\/a>, who is projected to receive more than 20 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>Retailleau is hoping that his support among Les R\u00e9publicains\u2019 members will give <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/french-conservative-leader-bruno-retailleau-announces-presidential-run\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">his campaign<\/a> a much-needed boost to catch up with Philippe.<\/p>\n<p>But his candidacy has sparked doubts within his own camp, with several figures \u2014 including former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and parliamentary group leader Laurent Wauquiez \u2014 declining to rule out presidential bids of their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manfred Weber, president of the center-right European People\u2019s Party and leader of the EPP Group in the European&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6192,375,379,36,5,1649,6193,6194],"class_list":{"0":"post-7595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-edouard-philippe","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-elections-in-europe","11":"tag-emmanuel-macron","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-french-election-2027","14":"tag-laurent-wauquiez","15":"tag-michel-barnier"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7595","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=7595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}