From TV power couple to presidential bid: can Raphaël Glucksmann unite France’s fractured left?
Pitching himself as the liberal, pro-European foil to both Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Raphaël Glucksmann is testing whether France’s anxious, divided middle ground still has the strength to shape the next presidency.
This French MEP wants to unite his country’s left ahead of the 2027 French presidential elections. Polls have so far put him at only 10 percent, but so-called ‘Glucksmania’ could help him.
Centre-left politician Raphaël Glucksmann announced his candidacy for the French presidency on Sunday. He did so in TF1’s studio after months of uncertainty and denials.
He will not face easy opponents in the battle for the Élysée Palace: the hard-right’s Marine Le Pen and far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who lead the polls, will both run for a fourth time.
For Glucksmann, therefore, the most important task will be to unite the French left after Emmanuel Macron’s 10 years as president.
“The left can win the presidential election if it stands firmly by its principles,” said Glucksmann, who leads the centre-left Place Publique party. “We must stop being afraid of Mélenchon.”
France’s two-round presidential election is scheduled for late April and early May.
Glucksmann prepared the announcement of his candidacy well. He made his public appearance at a time when most French people were returning from their summer holidays.
But the 46-year-old MEP had been attracting attention long before then. His relationship with Léa Salamé, the star presenter of France 2 public television’s main evening news programme, had raised questions in particular about the journalist’s impartiality.
During the summer, photographs of the couple on a beach in Corsica appeared in Paris Match. The magazine has served as a launchpad for several presidential candidates in recent decades, Reuters noted , while Le Monde wrote that they were the first paparazzi photographs of a politician who had until then guarded his private life closely.
Salamé and Glucksmann are described as one of France’s most influential power couples. He is a prominent politician; she is a star journalist who has put her career on hold because of her partner’s political ambitions.
Denisa Ballová is a reporter in the foreign affairs desk of Denník N based in France. She studied journalism and political science at Comenius University in Bratislava, previously worked at SME, later studied journalism in Aix-en-Provence and lived in Paris. She also lived in Estonia for two years.
