History UsefulNotes / FrenchPoliticalSystem

* The French comic book ''Quai d'Orsay'' by Christophe Blain and Abel Lanzac: an AffectionateParody of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under "Taillard de Vorms", a transparent Dominique de Villepin {{Expy}}. [[note]]Americans may remember de Villepin as being that French foreign minister who gave that speech at the UN defending France's veto to a UsefulNotes/UnitedNations-sanctioned military intervention in Iraq, leading to the whole CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys and FreedomFries deal.[[/note]] Abel Lanzac is actually the pen name of a former diplomat, so a decent case of ShownTheirWork. It was adapted into a 2012 film by Bertrand Tavernier starring Creator/ThierryLhermitte, Raphaël Personnaz and Niels Arestrup, and released internationally under the title ''The French Minister''.

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist/sovereigntist party created in late 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher and also includes national economic preference and major tax cuts. Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years).[[note]]He actually has the open support of billionaire media mogul Vincent Bolloré, [=CNews’=] owner.[[/note]] A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one. Ironically, some analysts suggest that his very far-right presidential campaign helped Marine Le Pen expand her voter base at the 2022 election's first round by making her look almost moderate by comparison.

* Napoleon, deciding that being First Consul really didn't suit him, had himself declared Emperor of the French in 1804 [[note]](he did not, however, snatch his crown from the Pope’s hands - that’s apocryphal)[[/note]], thus inaugurating the '''First Empire''' (again, they didn't call it that at the time). He set about conquering Europe. The other European powers ganged up on him in various ways, with limited success[[note]]A little-known fact is that Napoleon also tried to conquer back Haiti after it gained its independence by launching its own revolution, but the Haitians defeated him more than a decade before the Europeans could.[[/note]]. But, beginning with his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, he overextended himself militarily, and was defeated and forced to abdicate in 1814. Exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba (as its ruler), he escaped back to France and raised another army, a period known as "The Hundred Days" [[note]](not completely accurate, but close enough)[[/note]]. Defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was exiled, rather more permanently, to the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena.

* Eventually, things came to a head, and in July 1830, riots broke out. Charles X was forced to abdicate; his more liberal cousin, Louis-Philippe, the Duke of Orleans,[[note]]The Orléans branch of the House of Bourbon, historically liberal minded, had been favoured by liberal French constitutional monarchists since the days of the Directory, as the then-self-proclaimed Louis XVIII was seen as an intransigent reactionary, while the Duke of Orléans at the time of the Revolution, Louis Philippe II, had been a major leader of the liberal movement, renamed himself Philippe Égalité (Philippe Equality), and had voted for the execution of his cousin Louis XVI before being executed during the Reign of Terror for being insufficiently radical.[[/note]] was acclaimed "King of the French," and the constitutional '''July Monarchy''' was established. (''Literature/LesMiserables''[[note]]Specifically, volumes III-V of Les Misérables. Volume I begins in 1815, the year of Napoleon's return (though after his re-exile)[[/note]] is set here, against the tumult of the 1830 revolution and subsequent revolts. It also [[FanService inspired]] Eugène Delacroix's painting of the [[MostCommonSuperPower "liberated"]] ''Art/LibertyLeadingThePeople''.)

* '''The Fourth Republic''' was established after the Second World War. More or less a revival of the Third Republic, it was doing okay until most of France's [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchColonialEmpire colonies]] decided they wanted independence, which brought France into several devastating wars: the First Indochina War, 1946-1954, brought Vietnam its independence [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar for a bit]]. Shortly after, Algeria also demanded independence. This was not a simple matter: Algeria was not just part of France (for well over a century, northern Algeria was politically considered no different than any region of mainland France, with full voting rights and representation in Parliament), but ''also'' home to a million ''pieds-noirs'' (lit. "black feet"), ethnic French citizens descended from the previous century's settlement efforts, and they were determined to fight in Algeria "down to the last suitcase". France did so (to the point where Arabs to this day know the Algerian War of Independence as the "War of a Million Martyrs") until it became obvious that she couldn't pour the resources she needed into the war-effort without wrecking her economy and that the tide of public opinion within France itself had turned (Algeria would gain independence in 1962). Complicating matters was that the government shared the woeful instability of the Third Republic: elections happened far more frequently than they really should have, and nobody could keep a majority in Parliament for very long. The first president of the Fourth Republic, Vincent Auriol, endured ''18'' different governments in a seven-year term in office; on leaving he stated "The work was killing me; they called me out of bed at all hours of the night to receive resignations of prime ministers!" These two forces together--the failure to fight the colonial wars properly and chronic political instability--led to the eventual agreement that a new arrangement was necessary.

* Flush with victory and a spirit rather like his uncle's, Louis-Napoleon proclaimed the '''Second Empire''' in 1852, declaring himself "Napoleon III" (on the theory that Napoleon's infant son had become "Napoleon II" after Uncle Nap's abdication [[note]]Napoleon had formally declared his son to be this, and demanded recognition of this as a condition of his surrender and abdication, but was refused and forced to surrender unconditionally, renouncing all his descendants' right to rule[[/note]]), thus earning the dubious distinction of becoming both the first elected president and last monarch of France's history. His reign is a complex back-and-forth between periods of hard monarchy and more liberal ones. He is also known for having legalized the perhaps frenchest labour tradition: going on strike[[note]]There were already workers' strikes before, but they were systematically considered illegal and almost always repressed, before Napoleon III legalized trade unions and strikers.[[/note]]. Napoleon III got France involved in wars (against Austria in Italy and against Russia on the Crimea) and foreign adventures, like the disastrous attempt to install an emperor in Mexico. In 1870, Napoleon fell into a trap and went to war with Otto von Bismarck's UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}}. Briefly put, the Prussians, commanding several other German states as well, roundly kicked France's ass, leading Napoleon III to go into exile in England after his release from captivity in Kassel (former residence of one of his other uncles, King Jérôme Bonaparte of Westphalia). Bismarck declared the [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Empire]] at the Palace of Versailles, and annexed Alsace-Lorraine. Paris was taken over by socialists in an episode known as the Paris Commune, but they were bloodily crushed after 70 days [[note]]Formed by an alliance of lower-class workers with a part of the small bourgeoisie, the Commune is pretty much the first actual application of Socialism, during which the song ''L'Internationale'' was written. As brief as it was, some modern left-wing parties such as Unyielding France still attach a great importance to it, as did Creator/KarlMarx, who wrote in its praise at the time. Other French cities have been involved in the Commune movement, but for a much shorter period of time, and they have been much less influential.[[/note]]. But by the end of 1871, the time had come for a stable government, leading to...

The president was elected for seven years until a reform in 2000 that turned it into a five-year term. The goal was to synchronize the presidential election with the legislative one, eliminating or at least seriously reducing the odds of a cohabitation. The presidential election is in two turns: usually more than ten candidates run for the office, and only two remain during the second turn. This leads to one of the more likely scenarios for a future cohabitation: if there were to be another repeat of the 2002 race (in which the far-right candidate managed to make it into the second round because the mainstream left was [[WeAreStrugglingTogether too fractured]], giving the center-right candidate an easy second-round victory; theoretically the opposite could happen but it's unlikely as historically there are fewer right-wing parties and presidential candidates), and the left is less unpopular than the Socialists were in 2002 and actually manage to win a parliamentary majority, it's not inconceivable that you could get a cohabitation then.

* Firstly, France attempted to form a Republic--the '''First Republic''' (though of course, they didn't call it that at the time), which can be divided into roughly three parts. The first bit was the infamous ReignOfTerror, in which there was no formal executive (the National Convention ran everything), but Robespierre and the "Committee of Public Safety" ran the show −at least theoretically−, while France was at war with the neighbouring monarchies and the 1793 constitution ended up stillborn. Then came The Thermidorian Reaction, in which the Reign of Terror ended; this happened in July 1794. The Reaction instituted a "Directory" of five men to hold executive power in France (an arrangement inspired by, of all things, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Constitution_of_1776 Pennsylvania]]). This went on for five years, until, in 1799, General UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte seized power, more or less forcing the Assembly to declare him "First Consul of the Republic," inaugurating the "Consulate" in which, despite there being three Consuls, the First Consul held a truly remarkable amount of power. However, it was still a republic, if only in theory.

* The French comic book ''Quai d'Orsay'' by Christophe Blain and Abel Lanzac: an AffectionateParody of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under "Taillard de Vorms", a transparent Dominique de Villepin {{Expy}}. [[note]]Americans may remember de Villepin as being that French foreign minister who gave that speech at the UN defending France's veto to a UsefulNotes/UnitedNations-sanctioned military intervention in Iraq, leading to the whole CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys and FreedomFries deal.[[/note]] Abel Lanzac is actually the pen name of a former diplomat, so a decent case of ShownTheirWork. It was adapted into a film by Bertrand Tavernier (of ''Round Midnight'' fame) in 2012 and released internationally under the title ''The French Minister''.

** It also contains one of the most famous literary depictions of the battle of Waterloo.

For all its alleged instability, the Third Republic has thus far proved to be the longest-lived French regime since 1789, lasting just under 70 years. (The only other system to come close--the current system, the Fifth Republic--won't match it until 2028.[[note]]For the curious, the Fifth Republic will surpass the Third on August 9, 2028 assuming it endures to that date.[[/note]])

For all its alleged instability, the Third Republic has thus far proved to be the longest-lived French regime since 1789, lasting 70 years. (The only other system to come close--the current system, the Fifth Republic--won't match it until 2028.)

* '''Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste''' (NPA, New Anticapitalist Party): ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. A refoundation of an old Trotskyst party (the Revolutionary Communist League, LCR), whose most famous figures are postman Olivier Besancenot in the 2000s and Philippe Poutou in the 2010s.[[note]]For his first presidential campaign in 2002, Besancenot scored 4%. That's right, along with LO, the Trotskyst parties gathered ''10%'' of voters that year)[[/note]] They're composed of and led by mostly non-professional militants, and proud of this fact. They put an emphasis on ecological and social issues and like the previous party, they consider only social struggle brings any change.

The Constitutional Council supervises elections and rules on the constitutionality of laws both before and after they take effect. In this respect, it is similar to the United States Supreme Court, although it is not at the top of the judicial hierarchy. The French have an allergy to judicial power and judge-made law dating back to the ''parlements'' (which were law courts) of the ''[[UsefulNotes/LetatCestMoi ancien regime]]'', and as such have developed a highly complex and overlapping judicial system designed to confound the ability of judges to act as a check on the other two branches; as a result, the Constitutional Council is one of three high judicial bodies in France. The "Cour de Cassation" is the court of last resort for all judicial cases (civil and criminal) and is the only one of the three bodies that is strictly judicial. The "Conseil d'Etat" (lit. Council of State) --which also has some advisory functions to the executive--for all administrative cases. The members of the Constitutional Council are 9 councilors nominated by the "three presidents" (President of the Republic, president of the National Assembly and president of the Senate). Former Presidents of the Republic are rightful members. The council currently has 12 members, with two surviving former Presidents of the Republic : Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Nicolas Sarkozy. Although Nicolas Sarkozy has since resigned from it, since 1. members of the Constitutional Council are supposed to stay neutral with regard to party politics and 2. because the CC decided to invalidate his 2012 presidential campaign funds. François Hollande, most recent former president, is allowed to join but has not sat on the council as of January 2020.

The French Parliament is a bicameral legislature: the lower house (the National Assembly) is elected via Second Ballot (think Louisiana's run-off system), the PM is always from the political majority in the National Assembly, but the president chooses who from the winning party becomes PM (theoretically, the president chooses whoever he wants, but the PM needs the approval of the National Assembly to govern). The Senate is elected by a college of 150,000 great electors (all of them being elected officials, like deputies in the National Assembly, Mayors of the 36.000 French towns, etc...), and co-write the laws with the National Assembly: because its members are not directly elected, they are usually less known than the Deputies [[note]]and when they ''are'' better-known then their same-party NA counterparts, for instance if they've made the government or are party leaders, for instance Jean-Louis Borloo (UDI), Jean-Pierre Raffarin (former PM, UMP), or José Bové (EELV) they tend to be assumed to be deputies -- sometimes, they aren't deputies OR senators or haven't been for years, as with Christian-Democrat [[KnightTemplar Christine]] [[TangledFamilyTree Boutin]][[/note]], and often accused of being in the Senate because they were unable to win a "real" election. The same criticism is often leveled at candidates to the European Parliament, which is one of a number of reasons why few French voters care about the European elections.

* Firstly, France attempted to form a Republic--the '''First Republic''' (though of course, they didn't call it that at the time), which can be divided into roughly three parts. The first bit was the infamous ReignOfTerror, in which there was no formal executive (the National Convention ran everything), but Robespierre and the "Committee of Public Safety" ran the show −at least theoretically−, while France was at war with the neighbouring monarchies and the 1793 constitution ended up stillborn. Then came The Thermidorian Reaction, in which the Reign of Terror ended; this happened in July 1794. The Reaction instituted a "Directory" of five men to hold executive power in France (an arrangement inspired by, of all things, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Constitution_of_1776 Pennsylvania]]). This went on for five years, until, in 1799, General UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte seized power, more or less forcing the Assembly to declare him "First Consul of the Republic," inaugurating the "Consulate" in which, despite there being three Consuls, the First Consul held a truly remarkable amount of power. However, it was still a republic...[[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny wasn't it]]?

* Flush with victory and a spirit rather like his uncle's, Louis-Napoleon proclaimed the '''Second Empire''' in 1852, declaring himself "Napoleon III" (on the theory that Napoleon's infant son had become "Napoleon II" after Uncle Nap's abdication [[note]]Napoleon had formally declared his son to be this, and demanded recognition of this as a condition of his surrender and abdication, but was refused and forced to surrender unconditionally, renouncing all his descendants' right to rule[[/note]]), thus earning the dubious distinction of becoming both the first elected president and last monarch of France's history. His reign is a complex back-and-forth between periods of hard monarchy and more liberal ones. He is also known for having legalized the perhaps frenchest labour tradition: going on strike[[note]]There were already workers' strikes before, but they were systematically considered illegal and almost always repressed, before Napoleon III legalized trade unions and strikers.[[/note]]. Napoleon III got France involved in wars (against Austria in Italy and against Russia on the Crimea) and foreign adventures, like the disastrous attempt to install an emperor in Mexico. In 1870, Napoleon fell into a trap and went to war with Otto von Bismarck's UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}}. Briefly put, the Prussians, commanding several other German states as well, roundly kicked France's ass, leading Napoleon III to go into exile in England after his release from captivity in Kassel (former residence of one of his other uncles, King Jérôme Bonaparte of Westphalia). Bismarck declared the [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Empire]] at the Palace of Versailles, and annexed Alsace-Lorraine. Paris was taken over by marxists in an episode known as the Paris Commune, but they were bloodily crushed after 70 days [[note]]Formed by an alliance of lower-class workers with a part of the small bourgeoisie, the Commune is pretty much the first actual application of Socialism, during which the song ''L'Internationale'' was written. As brief as it was, some modern left-wing parties such as Unyielding France still attach a great importance to it, as did Creator/KarlMarx, who wrote in its praise at the time. Other French cities have been involved in the Commune movement, but for a much shorter period of time, and they have been much less influential.[[/note]]. But by the end of 1871, the time had come for a stable government, leading to...

UsefulNotes/{{France}} is famous for having gone from a [[UsefulNotes/LEtatCestMoi monarchy]] [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution to a republic]], but its political system has changed no fewer than ten--that's right, '''ten'''--times since Louis XVI's head came off in 1793, [[RevolvingDoorRevolution generally through revolutions]].

** Their candidate in 2022 was Emmanuel Macron. He won the second round of the election against Marine Le Pen in a rematch of 2017 with 58% of the votes. They obtained 170 seats at the National Assembly in 2022 as the leading component of the "Ensemble" centrist alliance (245 seats in total, which is not enough for an absolute majority and forces them to seek compromises with Les Républicains). These numbers are down from 314 seats for LREM alone in 2017 (267 before the 2022 election, many party members had left the party during the first Macron presidency, including deputies), although abstention was already at record levels that year.

* '''Lutte Ouvrière''' (LO, Workers' Struggle): A (very) old Trotskyist party which gives great importance to the defense of workers' rights and revolution. They developed a rather secretive culture due to a history of being hunted both by the Nazis ''and'' the Stalinists during the War. Its most famous spokeswoman was Arlette Laguiller, who was the first woman to run in a French presidential election. Which she did ''[[{{Determinator}} 6 successive times]]'', scoring as high as 5-6% in 1995 and 2002. Like all Trotskyist parties, though, they don’t really care about ''winning'' elections, only using them as platforms to make their voice heard. The party is notorious for its utter refusal to make alliances with anyone, even the ideologically close NPA.

* '''Parti Socialiste''' (PS, Socialist Party): The party in power between 2012 and 2017. Remember the SFIO and the Communist split in 1920? What remained of it soldiered on and its leader Léon Blum was even Predient of the Council (Prime Minister) in 1936-37 with the Front Populaire coalition[[note]]which also comprised the Communist Party and the Radical Party (center-left), although the Communist didn’t take part in the government[[/note]]. But the party slowly declined after WWII, before François Mitterrand salvaged it, made it take a more radical stance and turned it into the Socialist Party in 1971. During the seventies, the new party rapidly grew in influence until it started to eat into the PCF's electorate, and Mitterrand taking communist ministers in his government in 1981 actually ended up ''weakening'' said PCF (and many analysts think that was exactly the intention). Although the PS implemented a few acclaimed social reforms while in power (like the death penalty abolition, the Minimum Income of Insertion, the Tax on Large Fortunes or the 35 hours working week), since the mid-80s, its economic views have progressively switched to the right, making it some kind of French Democratic Party. [[ArtifactTitle So it's now "socialist" in name only.]] While it always was quite the BigScrewedUpFamily, the party's popularity nosedived during François Hollande presidency, and what remained of its left wing left the party with Benoît Hamon after his humiliating defeat in 2017 (an all-time low 6%). After François Hollande's presidency, the Socialist Party is seen as a grim shadow of its former self despite clinging to several ''régions''. [[note]]With a low 4% popularity rate in October 2016, caused by the adoption of a very unpopular labour code reform and repression of protests against this reform, but representative of a continuous decline in his popularity since its election in 2012 (with the exception of a spike in popularity after the adoption of same-sex marriage in France in 2013 and another with his management of the January 2015 attacks which was deemed adequate by most French), François Hollande holds the unpopularity record never reached by a French president since the invention of opinion polls. His Prime Minister Manuel Valls, largely but not only because of his role in the repression of several social movements, is also regularly cited among the five most hated politicians by the French, even ''years after'' he left France to go to Spain to continue politics there (which he can do because he is Franco-Spanish).[[/note]] After their disastrous score in the 2022 elections, however, what remained of the party eventually resigned itself to join the lefwing alliance led by Mélenchon for the parliament elections, leading to a leftward shift in the party’s line for the first time in decades (much to the ire of the party’s most liberal figures).

[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/logo_en_marche.jpg]]

* '''Rassemblement National''' (RN, National Rally): Known as the "National Front" until June 2018. The main nationalist party and, as of February 2020, second major party in number of voters. It was founded in TheSeventies by a bunch of people nostalgic of Vichy or French Algeria[[note]]two of which, Pierre Bousquet and Léon Gautier, fought for the Wafen-SS in the infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33rd_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_Charlemagne Charlemagne division]][[/note]], and was originally little more than a groupuscule before its sudden rise in the mid-eighties. Its most famous figure Jean-Marie Le Pen was consistently seen as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain because of his often sulfurous statements. In 2011, his daughter Marine won an internal election to become the president of the party. One could argue that the party's line has shifted from blatant antisemitism and racism, to the populist islamophobia popular in much of Europe. Marine Le Pen is by all accounts, if nothing else, not nearly as antisemitic as her father was [[note]] Very, ''very'' ironically, she enjoys support from some of the more conservative of French Jews, which would have been absolutely unthinkable ten years ago, due in part to her views on Islam and the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict[[/note]]. Her main battlehorses are defending secular values against the "Islamization" of France (something her younger voters disagree with, being more inclined towards rigid Catholicism), curbing immigration and fighting insecurity (which the RN considers to stem from immigration) and promoting the return of the death penalty in France. A notable difference in the RN's newer style of politics is a strikingly Left Front-esque focus on Finance and neoliberalism in TheNewTens (think a socially-conservative version of Geert Wilders), a much less Euroskeptical approach than her father (instead promoting close relations and work with other European far-right parties), distancing the European Union from the United States and turning to Russia as a new key ally, and a communication strategy commonly refered to as [[PoliticallyCorrectVillain "dédiabolisation"]] ("de-demonization"), that seeks to polish the image of the party in the media. Much of it was led by the party's no. 2 figure Florian Philippot, a self-proclaimed Gaullist who left the party in 2017 because of growing political disagreements. The party's notable for reaching the second turn in 2002, dovetailing the socialist candidate with 17%; if French people talk about "April 21", it refers to this. It was that big a shock. Then the party reached the second round once again on 23 April 2017 and some seats in Parliament and mayor offices. The consensus so far of RN-ruled towns and cities range between "less bad than expected" and "just like before with added patriotism". Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (niece of Marine) was the youngest MP in the 2012 legislature at the tender age of 23, a distinction she shares with her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Despite Marine's de-demonization attempts, her views on Europe, ecology, internal and external affairs (such as suggesting a partnership with UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin in the middle of a war between Russia and Ukraine, instilling a principle of "Préférence nationale"[[note]]"National preference", where a French has the exclusive right or a clear priority for social security, jobs, studies and housing over a non-French. She admits that, in order for it to be legal, she will have to [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem change the Constitution]] itself, not to mention how discordant this change will be with international political entities France is affiliated to.[[/note]]) remain as far-right as they ever could be. The result is that every election round where the party reached the second round (2002, 2017, 2022) leads to a situation where its opponents call for a "Front républicain"[[note]]"Republican front"[[/note]] to form and [[EnemyMine vote against it]] to keep it from allegedly threatening France's democracy as it stands.

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist/sovereigntist party created in late 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher and also includes national economic preference and major tax cuts. Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years).[[note]]He actually has the open support of billionaire media mogul Vincent Bolloré, [=CNews’=] owner.[[/note]] A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one. Ironically, some analysts suggest that his very far-right presidential campaign helped Marine Le Pen expand her voter base by making her look almost moderate by comparison.

** Their candidate in 2022 was Emmanuel Macron. He won the second round of the election against Marine Le Pen in a rematch of 2017 with 58% of the votes. They obtained 170 seats at the National Assembly in 2022 as the leading component of the "Ensemble" centrist alliance (245 seats in total, which is not enough for an absolute majority and forces them to seek compromises with Les Républicains).

* '''Lutte Ouvrière''' (LO, Workers' Struggle): A (very) old Trotskyist party which gives great importance to the defense of workers' rights and revolution. They developped a rather secretive culture due to a history of being hunted both by the Nazis ''and'' the Stalinists during the War. Its most famous spokeswoman was Arlette Laguiller, who was the first woman to run in a French presidential election. Which she did ''[[{{Determinator}} 6 successive times]]'', scoring as high as 5-6% in 1995 and 2002. Like all Trotskyist parties, though, they don’t really care about ''winning'' elections, only using them as platforms to make their voice heard. The party is notorious for its utter refusal to make alliances with anyone, even the ideologically close NPA.

** Their candidate in 2022 was Emmanuel Macron. He won the second round of the election against Marine Le Pen in a rematch of 2017 with 58% of the votes. seats at the National Assembly in 2022. They obtained 170 seats at the National Assembly in 2022 as the leading component of the "Ensemble" centrist alliance (245 seats in total, which is not enough for an absolute majority and forces them to seek compromises with Les Républicains).

* '''Mouvement Démocrate''' ([=MoDem=], Democratic Movement): the main centrist party, founded by the former lead of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), François Bayrou (deputy of Pyrénées-Atlantique at the time and now mayor of Pau). Economically mildly liberal, it created a surprise in 2007 with a score of 18,5%, [[OneEpisodeWonder but nothing ensued from it]]. Bayrou explicitly cites the American Democrats as an inspiration (hard to believe, we know, but the "neither socialist nor conservative" thing is actually kind of appealing to some in France), and actually tried to call his party ''Parti démocrate'', but learned that some dinky party nobody had ever heard of already had the name, which apparently pissed Bayrou off to no end. The orange color of the party's logo meanwhile was inspired by the 2004-2005 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution Orange Revolution]] in UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}}. In 2017 the [=MoDem=] forged an alliance with the aforementionned En Marche!, which ended up winning both the presidency and an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly. Basically half the UDF already split to join Alain Juppé/ Jacques Chirac to found the UMP in 2002. Bayrou was not one of them. Then, in 2007, virtually all of what was left of the UDF dumped him to found the Nouveau Centre under Hervé Morin, which then promptly joined a coalition with the UMP and was mostly absorbed by them, until the 2012 election, where Nicolas Sarkozy is perceived to have ditched the centrists to try to please the far-right (basically, ''not'' doing what got him elected in 2007, which worked just as well as you can imagine). What was left of centrists still loyal to the UMP at this point left to form the UDI.

* '''Lutte Ouvrière''' (LO, Workers' Struggle): A (very) old Trotskyist party which gives great importance to the defense of workers' rights and revolution. Its most famous spokeswoman was Arlette Laguiller, who was the first woman to run in a French presidential election. Which she did ''[[{{Determinator}} 6 successive times]]'', scoring as high as 5-6% in 1995 and 2002. Like all Trotskyist parties, though, they don’t really care about ''winning'' elections, only using them as platforms to make their voice heard. The party is notorious for its utter refusal to make alliances with anyone, even the ideologically close NPA.

** Their candidate in 2022 was Jean-Luc Mélenchon in his third and allegedly last attempt. He had the first round's third best score with 22% of the votes. They won 72 seats at the National Assembly in 2022, out of 131 seats for the alliance they spearheaded, the "NUPES".

** Their candidate in 2022 was Fabien Roussel. He ended up with 2.3% of the vote. They obtained 12 seats at the National Assembly in 2022 as part of the "NUPES" alliance (131 seats in total).

** Their candidate for 2022 was Anne Hidalgo (mayor of UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} since 2014). She ended up with 1.7% of the votes (an all-time low for the PS, or any major historical moderate Left wing party for that matter). They obtained an all-time low 24 seats at the National Assembly in 2022, as part of the "NUPES" alliance (131 seats in total).