He will apply for the position for the constituency of French people living in Monaco, Andorra, Portugal and Spain
Former French Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls will present himself to the French legislative elections in June with the president’s party, Emanuel Macron, by the constituency of French people living in Monaco, Andorra, Portugal and Spain, local media reported on Tuesday.
Valleys, 59 years old, will thus return to French politics that he left in 2019 to lead a center candidacy for Mayor of Barcelona, his hometown, which failed to seize power.
The politician, who left the Socialist Party in which he had been a member since he was 17 years old after the 2017 presidential elections, in which he supported Macron, was a deputy for the Essone constituency, on the outskirts of Paris, until in 2018 he launched Barcelona municipal politics. In 2017 he presented himself as assimilated to the president’s party and won a tight victory against a leftist rival by only 139 votes.
Macron celebration
In recent years he returned to France, where he was a political commentator and could be seen at Macron’s re-election celebration party on April 24, although sources from the president’s party said he had not been invited.
Valls, who had made a good part of his political career in the municipality of Évry, made the leap to national politics in 2011, when he ran for the primaries of the left to be the candidate for the Presidency the following year.
Although he finished fifth, he supported Francois Hollande, which after his victory rewarded him with the post of Minister of the Interior, a position he held until in 2014, after a poor electoral result for the Socialists, he was appointed Prime Minister. From that function he began to show his interest in aspiring to the Presidency, for which he left the Government to run again for primaries but was defeated by Benoît Hamon. Contrary to primary rules, he did not support the winner and showed his support for Macron.
Open door
Valls will now try to return to the National Assembly, which he entered for the first time in 2002 as a socialist, a position he only abandoned to join the Executive.
In recent months he had left the door open to return to French politics and even did not rule out accepting the post of prime minister again, something that he recognized in an interview with Horizons magazine.
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“I like to govern,” he assured that publication close to former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, where he showed his “love for public service and the country.”
Macron’s party plans to confirm the names of its candidates for the National Assembly throughout this week.