Could the French choose a 29-year-old as President?

Mark O'Neill July 03, 2025 10:00

In their next Presidential election in 2027, could the French choose a 29-year-old who did not graduate from university? Since 2022, Jordan Bardella has been president of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN, National Rally), the party which won the most votes of any party in parliamentary elections in June and July last year.

In April 2027, the French will choose a successor to Emmanuel Macron, who has held the post of President since 2017. He won the election that year and in 2022, but cannot run for a third term. In both elections, he defeated the candidate of the RN, the second time by a margin of 58.5 per cent to 41.5 per cent, a record vote for a far-right candidate.

“Bardella could win,” said Jean Leblanc, a secondary schoolteacher. “The French tried the left and right and liked neither. Now we are in the middle of eight years of Macron and he is very unpopular. The French are ready for something new, like the Swedes and the Austrians. The RN blame all the problems of the country on the immigrants and want to get rid of them. The election of Trump is good for Bardella. Trump is a model for him. With Bardella as president, the country would become ungovernable.”

Far-right parties are in the government of several countries in Europe, including Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, Italy. Finland, Greece and Austria. They are on the rise in others, including Germany and Britain. Driving this is opposition to immigrants and the fear that they threaten the national culture, austerity policies that have cut social welfare and anger against ruling elites. Bardella is hoping that this wave will bring him to power and make him the first far-right president in France’s history.

The candidate of the RN should be Marine Le Pen, the candidate who ran against Macron in 2017 and 2022. She is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the man who founded the far right party – then called the National Front – in 1972. A national politician since 2004, she is well known to the public. She has run for the presidency three times, in 2012 as well as in 2017 and 2022. Her share of the vote has risen each time.

But, in March this year, a French court convicted her and members of her staff of embezzling over four million euros in European Parliament funds for use by her party. It sentenced her to four years in prison – suspended – and banned her for running for political office for five years. This ruled her out of the 2027 election. She called the judgement “political” and is appealing. The judgement may be overturned. But, as of now, she is ineligible.

This opened the door for Bardella to run as representative of the RN. Le Pen is ambiguous about this. While she wants her party to be on the ballot paper, she believes that 2027 represents her best – and probably her last – chance to become President of France. She is the mentor of Bardella, who owes his political career to her. She has a long career in politics, he a short one.

In April, Bardella said that, if Le Pen were barred from running, he would be the RN candidate. Opinion polls conducted since April gave him between 31.5 per cent and 36 per cent of the vote.

He has an unusual profile for a French President. His parents divorced when he was one year old; his mother brought him up on the eighth floor of a drab high-rise apartment block in a poor suburb of northern Paris. It was an area full of immigrants and violence. He was an excellent student at secondary school, but failed the entrance exam for an elite university. He studied geography at the Sorbonne University in Paris, but dropped out to work for the RN, which he joined at the age of 16. He has worked for the party ever since.

The success of his rapid rise is due to his close relation with Le Pen, his good looks, eloquence and skill at social media. In 2019, at 23, he was elected to the European Parliament for the RN.

For the RN, controlling immigration is the most important issue. On June 28, the party invited members to a conference in Paris on “the systematic migration crisis”. Bardella has said that immigration could lead to the “extinction of France, the French identity, French sovereignty and France’s soul”. He would abolish birthright citizenship that give French citizenship to children of foreigners born and living in France. Popular among some of his supporters is the “Great Replacement” theory – the far left aims to replace the white population with immigrants from the Middle East, North and black Africa. This is popular among some Trump supporters too.

The 2027 election is a crowded field, with about a dozen candidates having declared or considered likely to declare. They include those from the right, the centre, the left, the far left and the greens. The winner must obtain more than 50 per cent of the votes cast. If none receives this in the first round, there is a second round of voting between the two top.

In the first round, Bardella is certain to finish one of the top two, with at least 30 per cent of the votes. His challenge is to win the additional 20 per cent needed to win. His party must throw off its reputation among many voters that it is racist and anti-Semitic. Over the past year, it has made great efforts to remove from the party members it judges guilty of these.

His opponents attack him for his lack of experience and frequent absences from the European Parliament of which he has been a member since 2019. His opponents attack him for his lack of experience and frequent absences from the European Parliament of which he has been a member since 2019.

Laurent Mauraut, a civil servant, said: “I do not think he will win. He is too young and inexperienced. Marine Le Pen might. In her three previous elections, the other candidate won because many people voted not for that candidate but against the far-right candidate. I think it will be the same this time. But it is possible, as in other countries in Europe that have gone to the far right.”

Marie Boissart, a travelling saleswoman, said that the RN blamed all the problems of France on the immigrants. “If they were all expelled, the economy would shut down. If Bardella became President, it would be a catastrophe. He is an extremist. We must save the country from him.”

Mark O'Neill

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.