French far-right politician Éric Zemmour joins 2027 presidential race

French far-right politician Éric Zemmour Tuesday announced his candidacy in next year's presidential election, vowing to crack down on immigration and expel unemployed foreigners even if they were legal residents.

The leader of the far-right party Reconquete! (Regain!), said on television he was running to "preserve a French France so that our future is French".

Zemmour, who finished fourth in the 2022 election, said he wanted "two million fewer immigrants by the end of the five-year term".

To achieve this, he wants to expel foreign offenders who are in prison, as well as "foreign unemployed people who have been out of work for more than six months" even if they are legal residents.

He joins the fray as more prominent far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is eyeing her best chance at winning power next year when President Emmanuel Macron steps down, after a court in July reduced her ban on holding public office for a graft conviction.

The veteran politician from the anti-immigration National Rally party, who was runner-up to Macron in the last two elections, has been widely projected to lead in the first round of the vote.

Zemmour, a 68-year-old former journalist who entered politics five years ago, had already indicated in mid-September that he would be a candidate, but his entourage immediately stressed that this was not yet a formal declaration.

Zemmour got a criminal conviction in 2020 for making remarks in which he called Muslim women and men wearing traditional religious clothing part of an "invasion" and a "colonisation".

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)