Philippe's PNF Probe Survives Court Test as Lecornu Tops 2027 Polls
A whistleblower's status is upheld, and Renaissance voters would rather have the PM who isn't running than either man who is. Meanwhile, Didier Deschamps bows out after France's World Cup exit.
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This week
⚽French World Cup ends alongside Deschamps’ career
✈️The FCAS post-mortem
⚖️Philippe whistleblower protected by courts
❓Lecornu as a surprise presidential candidate?
⛱️TFD goes on summer break
Right, as always, your favourite newsletter will be going off for a summer break to rest and recharge after a long year of geopolitical instability, and ahead of what will quite frankly be a crazy 2027 French Presidential Election.
So, expect one or two odd articles here and there, but otherwise, have a great summer and remember to subscribe to TFD.
✈️The FCAS post-mortem
Earlier this week, I released an in-depth analysis of the FCAS scandal that will hamstring European defence for years.
The €100 billion Franco-German-Spanish fighter jet was formally killed off on 8 June, but the reality is that this wasn't really a breakdown of the project so much as a political manoeuvre: Airbus had a full replacement consortium, complete with partner list, position paper and concept video, ready within 48 hours of the cancellation, which doesn't happen by accident.
I went through the IP fight between Dassault and Airbus, fact-checked the "80% workshare" claim that was spread through German media to attack the French portion of the project, and traced a Handelsblatt column blaming Dassault right back to the same executive who unveiled Germany's Plan B four months later.
The bigger point: this is what happens when two governments and two rival companies are told to cooperate on a continental-scale programme with nothing above them to make that cooperation binding, and when bad-faith actors can continue unpunished
The Death of FCAS: an Anatomy of Europe's €100 Billion Defence Scandal
The story of how the Franco-German fighter was killed, how Germany had its replacement ready beforehand, and what it tells us about Europe's sovereignty drive.
⚽French World Cup run ends alongside Deschamps’ Career
So, that’s it, folks, the World Cup has come to an end for the French national team, ending in a 4-6 defeat against England in a thrilling, but mixed 3rd place game where France apparently only woke up and decided to play in the second half.
But even sadder for French football fans was that last night marked the end of Didier Deschamps' career with l’Equipe de France after 25 years wearing our kit, having represented France 103 times as a player between 1989 and 2000, and managing our team from 2012 onwards. He was also the third man to win the World Cup as both a player and a manager.
However, there were some good notes, with the game seeing the highest number of goals scored in this competition, and Michael Olise marking World Cup history by recording the most assists in a single tournament.
On top of that, Kylian Mbappe earned the record for all-time goal scorer in World Cup history with 22 goals across three World Cups at the age of 27, and to top it off, he has moved ahead of Lionel Messi in the race for the 2026 Golden Boot.
⚖️Philippe whistleblower protected by courts
So, moving back to the politics of it all:
The Paris administrative tribunal has upheld the whistleblower status of the former Le Havre communauté urbaine employee whose report triggered the PNF investigation into Édouard Philippe.
In a judgment dated 15 July, the tribunal rejected Le Havre Seine Métropole’s bid to have the Défenseur des droits’ opinion annulled, ordering the authority Philippe presides over to pay 1,800 euros in costs to its former employee.
The case centres on a 2020 convention between Philippe and Stéphanie de Bazelaire, then his deputy for innovation and digital affairs, governing the animation of the Cité numérique du Havre and public subsidies routed through the LH French Tech association.
Alongside Philippe, the investigation also names de Bazelaire and Claire-Sophie Tasias, the communauté urbaine’s former director general of services. Philippe, mayor of Le Havre and a declared 2027 candidate, denies any wrongdoing and maintains he is “innocent.”
For some background, I covered the story earlier this year:
Philippe's Le Havre problem just became a Presidential problem
The PNF has referred the Cité numérique file to a juge d'instruction. The centrist favourite is now fighting to stay clean.
“Judith,” the whistleblower’s pseudonym, first reported the matter to the Parquet national financier in September 2023, prompting searches at the mairie and communauté urbaine headquarters in April 2024.
The civil-party complaint was filed on 19 June 2025, citing workplace harassment alongside the financial charges, though only misappropriation of public funds, favouritism, unlawful conflict of interest and extortion by a public official have been carried through into the formal investigation.
The PNF closed its preliminary probe on 3 March 2026 and issued a réquisitoire introductif on 7 May, the formal charging request that assigns an investigating judge, opening the judicial investigation that now formally encompasses Judith’s own complaint.
“Judith’s” lawyer, Jérôme Karsenti, told AFP that she is “looking forward to being heard” by the investigating judge. Meanwhile, on the other side, Philippe’s team said he learned of the investigation’s opening through the press and that he will “of course answer all the questions justice puts to him.”
While you would think this situation would heap pressure on the presidential candidate, currently competing with Gabriel Attal to succeed Emmanuel Macron in the centre, the candidate seems relatively unfazed. Philippe said in late May that he would remain a candidate even if placed under formal investigation.
The tribunal’s ruling settles a procedural skirmish, leaving the substance of the allegations untouched, but stripping Philippe’s camp of one avenue it could have used to contest the case’s legitimacy before the charges were dropped on his and his campaign’s head.
The PNF opened this case the same week it opened a separate recel inquiry into Dominique de Villepin, another declared 2027 hopeful, over a gifted statuette and bust.
So if you would like a scorecard, we currently have two presidential contenders who carry active PNF files heading into the same campaign, while a third, Marine Le Pen, is a convicted criminal.
And we say French politics is boring
❓Lecornu as a surprise presidential candidate?
Just when you thought the centre-right’s presidential psychodrama couldn’t get more absurd, an Odoxa-Backbone poll for Le Figaro found that Renaissance sympathisers rate Sébastien Lecornu, the French Prime Minister who keeps insisting he isn’t running, above both Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, who are.
Run on 15-16 July among a representative sample of 1,005 people, the poll found that 59% of Renaissance sympathisers believe that Lecornu would make a better candidate than Attal, and 57% preferring him to Philippe.
With both candidates attempting to find their voices and their place in the presidential contest, we have to admit that neither man is faring particularly well with his own base or the wider electorate, if you look at the ongoing polls, which says less about Lecornu than about the two of them.
Nationally, the story flips. Only 22% of French people rate Lecornu as a good candidate at all, and the wider public barely distinguishes between him and his rivals: 38% would take him over Attal, 37% over Philippe, numbers close enough to be statistical noise rather than a mandate.
The rest of the poll is not exactly a pep talk for anyone in the race. 44% of French people can’t spontaneously name anyone they’d like to see elected president, and only 43% of respondents name someone who’s actually declared.
Regardless of the ongoing judicial issues, Marine Le Pen tops the list, cited by 18% of respondents, up 8 points. Philippe and Jean-Luc Mélenchon tie for second on 7% each, while Gabriel Attal was mentioned by only 2%, barely beating out the far-right Sarah Knafo.
Odoxa also tested a dozen “alternative” figures, none of whom cracked 23% approval as a potential candidate. Michel-Édouard Leclerc, the supermarket boss, topped that particular non-podium, just ahead of Lecornu and Gérald Darmanin, both on 22%.
Perhaps the most telling number: 66% of French people think a Renaissance-PS alliance would be a bad idea. But among the two electorates who’d actually have to live with it, 73% of Renaissance sympathisers and 54% of Socialists rather like it.
Read together with Lecornu’s numbers, the message from the centre and centre-left isn’t “give us a candidate”, it’s almost a cry of “give us anyone else.”
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Have François Hollande and Ségolène Royal definitely thrown their hats into the ring now?