France's Gabriel Attal says running for president

PARIS: France's former prime minister Gabriel Attal said he would run for president next year, becoming the second prominent centrist to challenge the far right when Emmanuel Macron steps down. '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 prime minister when he served in 2024. 'I have decided to run for president,' he said in the southern village of Mur-de-Barrez.
The newest presidential candidate, a Parisian who leads the Renaissance party founded by Macron, is hoping to lead the centrist camp in the 2027 polls. '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 said. He will face competition from 55-year-old Edouard Philippe, a former head of government earlier during Macron's tenure who leads his own Horizons party.
Opinion polls have suggested that Philippe could win the presidential election in a runoff against the far right. Speaking to the press in Mur-de-Barrez, Attal pledged to uplift individuals 'so that everyone in France can say to themselves that their children, their grandchildren will have a better life'. He also promised to uplift France so that 'every French person in France can say to themselves that our country will once again become Europe's leading power'.
Attal rose quickly after he entered politics in his early 20s. He was elected to France's lower house of parliament in 2017 and later served as government spokesperson, budget minister and education minister. He stepped down as prime minister after Macron dissolved the parliament in the summer of 2024, in a gamble that was intended to stave off the advance of the far right.
The snap polls instead backfired and ended up allowing the far-right National Rally to become the single largest party in a hung parliament, leading to months of political deadlock. Attal distanced himself from Macron over the dissolution, saying he had not been consulted.
Separately, France will pump one billion euros of new funding into quantum computing, President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday, warning that the country and the wider European Union must invest to keep up with American and Chinese advances. Several governments are racing to master quantum computing, a nascent technology that promises to solve some types of mathematical problems many times faster than 'classical' machines.
Its potential applications range from enabling breakthroughs in drug development and materials science, to cracking encryption techniques widely used in computer security. 'The speed of our competitors requires that we shift into a higher gear' and 'change the scale' of investment, Macron said during a visit to a supercomputing centre in Bruyeres-le-Chatel, south of Paris. He pointed especially to developments in the United States, where companies have boosted quantum investments.
The Commerce Department in Washington on Friday announced injections of public cash totalling over $2.0 billion into private quantum firms. France had already committed 2.3 billion euros ($2.7 billion) of funding for quantum research since 2021, including in its heavyweight defence industry. — AFP