Keystone-SDA
The French Minister of Culture Rachida Dati announced on Monday her candidacy for the legislative elections in Paris, against the candidate officially invested by his party, the former Prime Minister Michel Barnier, and despite the legal proceedings that weigh on her.
(Keystone-ATS) Rachida Dati told the daily Le Parisien that she would be a candidate “whatever happens”, accusing Mr. Barnier of presenting himself to serve “presidential ambitions”.
This partial legislative, necessary after the declared ineligibility of the deputy elected in 2024, will be the starting point for the upcoming electoral deadlines in France in the coming years.
In 2026 will be the election for the town hall of Paris. A ballot for which Rachida Dati, unhappy finalist in 2020, will most likely be a candidate, she who has already been a district mayor since 2008.
But to this electoral agenda, Ms. Dati must now correspond to her legal agenda after her referral to trial last week for corruption and influence traffic.
The Minister of Culture, 59, who appealed the decision, is suspected of having received 900,000 euros between 2010 and 2012 for consulting services with a subsidiary of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, but without having really worked, while she was a lawyer and deputy European.
Left in ambush
For his part, Michel Barnier, an ephemeral Prime Minister between September and December 2024, was invested on Monday by a commission of the Les Républicains party. He was lent him ambitions for the next presidential election, in 2027.
If he assured that he was “candidate against anyone, or rather with everyone” for this partial legislative, the strategy of the man from and former deputy in Savoy, mountainous region of the east of France, arouses questions even in his party, the Republicans (right).
One of his executives suspects him of “to run for the presidency of the party’s group” from the party to the National Assembly, a rumor denied by the entourage of the former Prime Minister.
These divisions could delight the left. She had created the surprise last year by managing to slip into the second round in this constituency, long considered to be “imperdable” by the right.
