Anne Hidalgo's chair is (soon) up for grabs. The mayor of Paris announced this Tuesday that she will not be a candidate in the capital in 2026, according to an interview published in the daily The World.
“I will not run for a third term. It’s a decision that I took a long time ago,” declared the socialist councilor, in charge of the capital since 2014, putting an end to the suspense of several months over his candidacy. “I have always subscribed to the idea that two mandates were sufficient to carry out profound changes,” adds the outgoing mayor, 65, whose second mandate was marked by the popular success of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. city last summer.
She passes the baton to Rémi Féraud
Less than a year and a half before the municipal elections, Anne Hidalgo assures that she will be “mayor until the last day, with the same energy” as when she arrived at City Hall where she succeeded the socialist Bertrand Delanoë , in March 2014, becoming the first woman to lead Paris.
Anne Hidalgo says she wanted to announce her decision “sufficiently early” out of “respect” for Parisians and to prepare “a calm transmission” carried by the socialist senator Rémi Féraud, one of her great followers.
At 53, the former mayor of the 10th arrondissement, who chairs the municipal majority group in the Paris Council, has, according to her, “the solidity, the seriousness and the ability to unite necessary” to become mayor of Paris.
No alliance with LFI
The announcement comes a week after her former first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire, with whom she is at odds, declared himself a candidate to “ease tensions” and become “the mayor of reconciliation of Parisians”.
The 46-year-old PS deputy, who inflicted a scathing defeat on former minister Clément Beaune in the legislative elections, has already received the support of 450 activists from the Parisian socialist federation. This Tuesday evening he is organizing a first rally around his candidacy. “Emmanuel Grégoire has chosen to go to the National Assembly to take up the fight against the extreme right: there will likely be a dissolution by the end of 2025. We cannot be a candidate for everything”, tackles Anne Hidalgo . “Rémi aims to become the next mayor of Paris. But it's not me who decides, I don't impose anything, I simply give an indication. It will be up to the Parisian socialist activists to decide,” says the councilor.
In any case, she “wishes” that ecologists and communists rally around the candidacy of her runner-up “from the first round of municipal elections”, but rules out any alliance with La France insoumise.
