Socialist Francois Hollande, France’s president from 2012 to 2017, will stand in early legislative elections in two weeks.
This is reported by Efe, which cites confirmation of Hollande’s entourage on France Info radio.
Hollande is expected to speak to the media in the coming hours.
On Thursday, the former head of state gave his full support to the creation of a new Popular Front, an alliance of several of France’s left-wing parties, insisting that it was necessary to go “beyond differences” given the risk of the executive being led by an extreme… right.
Hollande called for the creation of a left-wing coalition that defends “European orientation, the presence of France” in NATO and the recognition of the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023 as terrorist attacks.
According to Efe, this was a way to distance himself from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFI party, with which the party has deep differences.
French leftist parties, the Socialist Party, the environmental party EELV, Defiant France and the French Communist Party, announced on Thursday that they had reached a final agreement to create a New Popular Front ahead of early legislative elections.
The date of the election was also criticized by the former president, who criticized his successor Emmanuel Macron for calling it “at the worst time and in the worst circumstances.”
The elections will be held in two rounds, on June 30 and July 7, and were called by Macron on Sunday evening after the remarkable victory of the far-right National Union party (RN, its French acronym) in the European elections. on Sunday.