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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Jon Henley, Europe correspondent

Thirty-five people want to be the next president of France. What could possibly go wrong?

French President Emmanuel Macron smiles while walking away from a podium with a French flag
Emmanuel Macron’s time at the helm is coming to an end. Photograph: Tom Nicholson/Reuters

“The real risk,” France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, reportedly said last month, “is that this tangle of ambitions reflects such a lack of engagement with reality on the part of all these candidates that voters find the whole thing grotesque.”

He has a point. By this time next year, France will have a new president and Emmanuel Macron, who is constitutionally barred from serving more than two consecutive terms, will have left after a decade in the Élysée Palace.

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