The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly summary of the major events taking place in French politics, published on Sundays in order to give you the perfect way to catch up with French news and events.

Polling update

Les Républicains court l’UDI officials

Ahead of the first round of the Presidential elections, a handful of the Les Républicains candidates started to present their programme to the 300 elected officials on the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI).

Valérie Pécresse began the procession on Monday evening, with Xavier Bertrand following shortly behind her on Tuesday. Following on from him Philippe Juvin outlined his campaign on Thursday. However, not everybody decided to take part in this election gambit, with Michel Barnier having refused due to wanting to focus on convincing his party to support him first before looking to their allies. Éric Ciotti similarly refused to participate.

With the UDI, along with the Républicain breakaways AGIR, representing a significant group of potential centre/centre-right that could push a right-wing candidate into the second round of the 2022 Presidential elections, this is an important attempt by these candidates to build their profile, to build their cross-party credentials, and to show that they’re the more serious candidate.

However, this may also be seem as a show of weakness by candidates like Pécresse and Bertrand, with some potentially viewing these overtures to the UDI as a declaration of weakness in the face of nominations candidates like Michel Barnier, who has come from behind to potentially find himself in pole position for the nomination.

Emmanuel Macron confronts Xavier Bertrand

On a trip in the north of France, Emmanuel Macron found him in the unique situation of being a potential campaign opportunity for one of the prospective Les Républicains candidates, Xavier Bertrand.

Following a series of events where one of France’s cutting edge steel plants, Ascoval, almost had the entirety of it’s activity relocated to Germany by German group Saarstahl, the French government was successful in stopping this. In particular, the Minister of Industry, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, worked hard to prevent this from happening and to come to a solution.

However, the potential presidential candidate for Les Républicains, Xavier Bertrand, argued that not enough had been done, and that “The solution adopted is not satisfactory”, with more needing to be done to protect the company which he believes was unable to be competitive with the high electricity tariff it was subjected to. While they weren’t able to come to an agreement, they took part in a meeting regarding the development of Sambre, Avesnois and Thiérache, three regions in northern France that have struggled with underinvestment over decades.

Staying within the region until Monday 22nd November, Emmanuel Macron also announced several investments into infrastructure, education, culture and health that will undoubtable form a part of his presidential campaign, and which will be used to judge the support he has given to underprivileged regions.