fr France · 30 May 2026

France 2027 Presidential Race Opens With Attal Rally

Gabriel Attal launched his 2027 presidential bid before 5,000 in Paris, naming education, wages, borders and AI as priorities while polling fourth at 13 percent. The same day the National Assembly overrode the government to write minimum farm-gate prices into the agricultural bill and unanimously abolished the Code Noir, while protesters massed near the Olympia against Vincent Bollore's media grip. Macron readied Monday's 'Choose France' summit at Versailles amid factory closures and rising debt, as Paris summoned Russia's ambassador over a drone that hit a Romanian apartment block.

France's 2027 presidential season opened in earnest on Saturday as Gabriel Attal held his first campaign rally at the Parc des Expositions in Paris, drawing about 5,000 supporters and Renaissance figures including David Amiel, Roland Lescure, Eleonore Caroit and Stephanie Rist. The former prime minister set four priorities -- education, wages, borders and artificial intelligence -- pledged "action and hope," and urged voters to "submerge" La France Insoumise and the National Rally, which he branded "merchants of hate." He sits fourth in the polls at 13 percent, behind Jordan Bardella, Edouard Philippe and Jean-Luc Melenchon, and worked throughout to distance himself from Emmanuel Macron.

The launch coincided with two setbacks for the government in the National Assembly. Lawmakers overrode ministers to write minimum farm-gate prices (prix plancher) into the emergency agricultural bill, with La France Insoumise and the National Rally combining to rework a text that had been focused on pesticides, water and farm incomes. The Assembly also voted unanimously to abolish the Code Noir, with Macron framing the repeal as the correction of a historic legal legacy and an affirmation of republican values.

In the capital, several hundred people gathered near the Olympia concert hall in a protest called by the CGT Spectacle union against billionaire Vincent Bollore's grip on media and culture. Jean-Luc Melenchon, who joined alongside actress Adele Haenel, told AFP that if his camp wins in 2027 "the entire Bollore trust will be dismantled" through an anti-concentration law, casting the demonstration as a front against what organisers called "the far right's cultural battle."

The political churn played out against a weakening economy. Macron toured a Thermomix factory on Friday ahead of Monday's annual "Choose France" summit, where he will host some 200 foreign business leaders at Versailles in a bid to set a new foreign-investment record -- even as factory closures outnumber openings, unemployment rises and the national debt climbs. Renaud Foucart, a senior economics lecturer at Lancaster University Management School, pointed to the added drag of the Iran war on French growth.

Abroad, France summoned the Russian ambassador on Friday after a drone crashed into an apartment building in NATO-member Romania, with the foreign minister condemning the incident as an irresponsible escalation -- the war on Europe's eastern flank again intruding on Paris's agenda.

Sources