MUR-DE-BARREZ, France - Former prime minister Gabriel Attal said on Friday he would run for president of France year when Emmanuel Macron steps down, becoming the second prominent centrist to challenge the far right.
“I can’t take this kind of French politics anymore, where it’s just 50 shades of managing decline,” said the 37-year-old, who was France’s youngest-ever prime minister when he served briefly in 2024.
He announced his bid under a blazing sun in the southern village of Mur-de-Barrez — the kind of rural area where France’s centrists hope to strengthen their performance against the far-right National Rally (RN) party.
Attal joins a crowded field of candidates, including 55-year-old Edouard Philippe, an experienced centre-right former prime minister, and hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, 74.
The RN party is banking on its best chance yet at winning power next year, with either Marine Le Pen, or Jordan Bardella, 30, running for the country’s top job.
The newest presidential candidate, an openly gay Parisian educated in top schools, made history when he became France’s youngest ever prime minister at the age of 34.
His meteoric rise in politics has drawn comparisons with Macron, who was 39 when he won the Elysee Palace in 2017, becoming France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon.
Attal will turn 38 next March, just ahead of the presidential election scheduled for April.
In what appeared to be a move laying the ground for his bid at the presidency, Attal opened up about his love life in a book published last month.
He devoted a chapter to “the man of my life”, European commissioner and former minister Stephane Sejourne.
Fierce competition
Attal distanced himself from Macron after the president dissolved French parliament’s lower house in 2024, cutting short his brief tenure as prime minister.
Macron’s gamble intended to stave off the advance of the far right, but the snap polls backfired, leading to months of political deadlock.
The move allowed the RN to become the single largest party in a hung parliament.
Attal will face fierce competition from Philippe, a former head of government earlier during Macron’s tenure who leads his own Horizons party.
Opinion polls suggest Philippe could win the presidential election in a runoff against the far right.
Attal has quickly risen through the ranks since entering politics in his early 20s.
He was elected to France’s lower house of parliament in 2017 and later served as government spokesperson and budget minister.
As education minister between 2023 and 2024, he tackled bullying and also banned pupils from wearing the abaya, a loose-fitting garment from the shoulders to the feet worn by Muslim women.
Macron’s Renaissance party has often been criticised for its weak local roots, and Attal chose to launch his presidential bid in rural France to send a message of solidarity with ordinary people.
“The day we stay locked in Parisian offices, in ministries, is the day politics stops,” he said.
“Having travelled a lot in France and met many French people, I’ve come to a conviction — a very strong one — that our finest chapters are still ahead of us,” he added.
Attal, whose father was Jewish, said he had experienced both anti-Semitism and homophobia. He has also said that he is “Russian Orthodox through my mother”.
