French elect mayors in key cities including Paris

Voters cast their ballots for mayors in major French cities on Sunday, with the left battling to keep Paris while the far right eyes gains ahead of next year's presidential election. Most of the country's almost 35,000 villages, towns and boroughs elected their leaders in a first round last weekend, but the races went to run-offs in about 1,500 communes, including bigger urban centres. The local ballots are being closely watched to gauge the mood on the ground and potential party alliances before the election of a successor to centrist President Emmanuel Macron next year, with the far right scenting its best chance yet at seizing power.

Patrice Laurent, 77, was among those voting Sunday in Paris, a capital of some two million inhabitants that has been under leftist leadership for the past 25 years. "I don't want the city to go back to the right," he said, outside a school turned polling station in northeastern Paris.

The race is tight between leftist Emmanuel Gregoire — a former deputy of outgoing Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo — and his runner-up in the first round, right-wing ex-minister Rachida Dati. The former justice and culture minister, a mentee of now convicted ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, hopes to seize Paris for the right and become its second woman mayor in a row.

Dati, who faces trial in September on corruption charges she denies, has boosted her chances after a centre-right candidate and a far-right hopeful dropped out. Meanwhile, Gregoire has refused to join forces with a hard-left contender who has remained in the race, splitting the leftist vote.

Leftists and centrists have allied in recent elections against the far right, but the left has been fractured since the fatal beating last month of a far-right activist blamed on fringe leftists. The legacy of the outgoing Paris mayor, Hidalgo, includes bike lanes and making the Seine swimmable for the first time in a century for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

But critics accuse her of merely shifting traffic elsewhere, while allowing security and cleanliness to deteriorate. Dati has pledged to make security and rubbish collection top priorities, and was last week re-elected mayor of the capital's chic seventh district, which is home to the lower house of parliament and embassies.

Voters in the neighbourhood were back at polling stations on Sunday to choose an overall leader for the city. Bernard Collet, 79, said it was time for change in Paris. "Social issues are important, but so are the rest — traffic, cleanliness, all that is important too. I feel like some things are being neglected," he said. But Marion, a 41-year-old legal advisor who had cycled to her polling station in the same district, said Paris had improved under the left, with "bike lanes everywhere".

"As a cyclist with young children, these are changes that really affect quality of life," she said.

In other parts of France, Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party is hoping for better scores than in previous local polls. The RN claims that it and its allies were re-elected last Sunday in 10 communes, including the southern city of Perpignan of 120,000 inhabitants — the largest in France to be run by the far-right party. They also say they have won in 14 other districts. But the anti-immigration RN is also hoping to be elected in more populated areas.

Its candidate is leading by far in Toulon, a southern city of 180,000 residents. If captured in the run-off, it would be the largest under RN control to date. In the southern city of Marseille, France's second-largest, RN hopeful Franck Allisio came second last week, a single percentage point behind incumbent left-wing mayor Benoit Payan. But the left could well stay in charge, after a hard-left candidate stepped down. In the northern port city of Le Havre, declared presidential candidate Edouard Philippe is well-placed to remain mayor.

Agence France-Presse