Gabriel Attal campaigns through France's August break to boost presidential prospects

PARIS — Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is trying to jump-start his presidential prospects by taking advantage of his rivals enjoying France’s cherished August break.

Attal, a former prime minister who now leads President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist political party Renaissance, is betting that by keeping a busy schedule during the holiday and meeting with people across the country — including those at vineyards, markets and ports as well as vacationers in picturesque seaside towns — he can show voters what sets him apart from the field.

“It’s a rather bourgeois assumption to think that all French people take time off or go on vacation,” said a representative for Attal’s team who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about campaign dynamics. “There’s no way he’s going to suspend his campaign over the summer.”

But political reality is also forcing Attal to campaign in August for the vote in April of next year. If he wants a real shot at catching up in the polls, there’s little time to waste.

Surveys have consistently shown the 37-year-old trailing Edouard Philippe, his main ideological rival for centrist and center-right votes. Given the contest goes to a two-candidate runoff if nobody wins a majority in the first round, the two men have tentatively agreed that only one of them should be on the ballot so they don’t split their shared voter base — which could cost both of them a spot in the second round.

Philippe, far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen, far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon and conservative candidate Bruno Retailleau are all among the presidential hopefuls taking long summer breaks, only interrupting their time off for the occasional op-ed or statement on major events like the wildfires that ravaged southwest France.

Their reasoning for slowing down during the peak holiday season is straightforward: Voters want to rest and recharge, so candidates shouldn’t harass them with politics and should instead enjoy one last bit of respite before the race enters its decisive stretch.

“We shouldn’t bother the French people while they’re on vacation,” said a Retailleau adviser.

Attal is betting otherwise that a summer spent campaigning can help close the gap in the polls.

“A campaign is about winning over the French one by one … [Attal] wants to show that he’s more determined than the others,” added his adviser.

The right track

It’s unclear for now to what extent Attal’s summer work will reap dividends with voters, as most pollsters who would investigate that question have themselves set out-of-office messages.

But the absence of other candidates on the campaign trail has given Attal an opportunity to dominate headlines, and he’s used it to make a play for right-wing voters.

At the start of the month, Attal, a member of parliament who represents a Paris suburb, gave an interview to the right-wing weekly Le Journal du Dimanche in which he called for lower immigration, a sweeping streamlining of France’s administrative procedures and more effective enforcement of criminal sentences.

He then traveled to western France, where, in front of cameras, he confronted a group of French gens du voyage — a legal classification for traditionally itinerant communities, including Roma and Manouche, and long a target of the French right — who had occupied land without authorization.

The encounter can be seen below in a report from CNEWS, in French.

French municipalities are required to provide designated stopping sites for traveling communities, but those obligations are not always met — or the sites provided are insufficient — sometimes resulting in unauthorized occupations of public or private land.

For both Attal and Philippe, making inroads on the right will be crucial. Macron’s 2022 reelection was buoyed by older, more affluent voters who had traditionally backed conservatives.

But Philippe begins that contest with a built-in advantage.

He is a former member of the conservative party Les Républicains and has always identified as a man of the right. Attal, who started his political career in the youth wing of the center-left Socialists, has resisted the label.

One conservative minister in the current French government, who has not endorsed a candidate for 2027, readily described Philippe as belonging to his political camp. Attal, the minister said, has a “very flexible” ideological spine.