What’s the story and why is it important?
France elects its next president in two rounds of voting on 10 and 24 April that will determine the course of western Europe’s second-largest country for the next five years.
Twelve candidates – eight men and four women – qualified for inclusion on the first round ballot paper by gathering the necessary 500 endorsements from elected officials.
Only a handful, however, have any chance of progressing to the second round run-off, including the favourites Emmanuel Macron, the outgoing president, and Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally.
Polls suggest three others will secure more than 10% of the vote: the hard-left veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon; Le Pen’s far-right rival, the anti-immigrant polemicist Éric Zemmour; and Valérie Pécresse of the rightwing Les Républicains party.
While the split in the far-right vote and Russia’s war on Ukraine favour Macron, the result is far from a foregone conclusion: 40% of voters are still undecided, and the president’s team are particularly worried about the possibility of a low turnout.
The election’s outcome will have an impact beyond France, to the rest of European Union (France is the EU’s second largest economy) and beyond. Since Angela Merkel left office, the liberal, centrist Macron has become the bloc’s most visible leader, a believer in greater “European sovereignty” and an outspoken defender of western values with a clear desire to shape world events.
A Le Pen victory would deal a heavy symbolic blow to the EU and be widely seen as a further populist, nation-first threat to the bloc’s drive for greater integration.