Éric Zemmour, center, surrounded by Marion Maréchal, Guillaume Peltier, and Nicolas Bay, on April 25, 2022, the day after the presidential runoff. Posed smiles and dark suits for the leadership team of his first campaign. Credit: Anh De France / Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Eric Zemmour said Thursday, September 17, on BFMTV that the president of Reconquête will run in the 2027 presidential election. He has not made a formal announcement at this stage. He also detailed the foreigners he wants to “send back,” from prisoners to long-term unemployed people, including those with legal status. Three of his arguments can be checked against official texts and figures: an article “from 1945,” the share of foreigners in prison, and the novelty of his measure.
A Confirmed Candidacy, Not Yet Officially Declared
Invited on the program “Face à BFM,” the far-right party president first said, early in the evening, that he was “in a candidacy process,” explaining that “this has to be done solemnly.” More than an hour later, he let it slip: “I’m not a politician, I’m a candidate for the presidency of the Republic,” before correcting himself: “You understand, I will be a presidential candidate.”
According to people close to him, cited by AFP, his formal announcement should come this fall, probably as early as October. On September 3, at the Châlons-en-Champagne fair (Marne), he had promised it “before December.” The intention was not new: as early as May 3, on RTL’s “Grand Jury,” he said, “If there is no primary, I will run.” He justifies his caution by his 2022 campaign, which he says was run “in disarray”: “We didn’t have a party, we didn’t have the signatures, and we didn’t have a platform.”
Prisoners, Offenders, Undocumented Migrants, Unemployed People: Eric Zemmour’s List
As the program went on, the 68-year-old former journalist listed the foreigners he wants to expel. He defends “remigration”, meaning, according to AFP’s definition, “the expulsion of foreign people and not just a halt to immigration.”
First, prisoners: “All foreigners who are in French prisons must be sent back. That’s 25% of prisons.” Then “foreign offenders, even those who are not in prison,” such as people under electronic monitoring or sentenced to community service. Next come foreigners in irregular status, whose removal is, in his view, “obvious.”
The last category is the broadest. Eric Zemmour also wants to send back “the long-term unemployed, and all those who live solely on social benefits,” even when they are in legal status. After hesitating between “more than six months” and “one year,” he settled on one year of unemployment. The rule would apply “even if the person has been here for twenty years,” because “a foreigner must not weigh on public finances.” To justify it, he cites an old text: “There is an article in the code on foreigners that dates, I think, from 1945, and says that any foreigner who weighs on public finances must be expelled.”
The president of Reconquête has been convicted several times over his remarks. In December 2025, the Court of Cassation rejected his appeal. His conviction for complicity in incitement to hatred, after 2020 statements about unaccompanied minors, became final.
“1945 Article”: A Removal Ground Deleted in 1981
The provision he seems to be referring to did in fact exist, but it disappeared from the law forty-five years ago. The November 2, 1945 ordinance long governed the entry and stay of foreigners. In its original version, Article 23 allowed the expulsion of a foreigner whose presence constituted “a threat to public order or public credit.” The European Court of Human Rights cites that wording in its Beldjoudi v. France judgment of March 26, 1992.
The October 29, 1981 law removed the reference to “public credit” and required a “serious threat to public order,” the same ruling notes. The Pasqua law of September 9, 1986 settled for a simple threat to public order, without restoring “public credit.” The law of August 2, 1989 then returned to the 1981 rule. Since 2005, these provisions have appeared in the Code on the Entry and Stay of Foreigners and Asylum Law (Ceseda), whose Article L. 631-1 allows a foreigner to be expelled “when their presence in France constitutes a serious threat to public order.” Expulsion remains an individual administrative decision, subject to review by the administrative judge, who in particular checks whether the alleged threat is real.
Foreign Prisoners: 24% According To The Justice Ministry
On the share of foreigners in prison, the figure given is close to the official numbers. As of May 1, 2026, French prisons held 89,091 inmates, including 21,424 foreigners (24%), according to a response from the Justice Ministry published in the Official Journal on June 30. On January 8, there were 21,155 out of 86,376, the government told the Senate. Their share is even tending to fall: since January, the total number of inmates has risen by 3.1%, while the number of foreign inmates has risen by 1.3%.
The phrase “all foreigners who are in prison” nonetheless covers different situations. Of the 21,424 foreign inmates, 13,733 had been definitively convicted and 809 were both convicted and awaiting another decision. The other 6,879, nearly a third of the total, were pretrial detainees, meaning people awaiting trial and therefore presumed innocent. Among the most represented nationalities are Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, but also Romanians and Portuguese. For these European Union citizens, removal is governed by European free-movement rules.
The removal of foreign prisoners already exists on a case-by-case basis. In the same response, the ministry says that 679 of them had been handed over to law enforcement since January 1, 2026 as part of conditional release-expulsion. This sentencing arrangement allows a convicted person to be released before the end of their term, provided they are removed from the territory. Their average monthly number rose from 96 in 2024 to 170 in 2026.
Foreign Unemployed People: A 2022 Measure With A Broader Scope
The most commented-on measure on the list is only partly new. In 2022, Eric Zemmour’s platform already planned to “send back foreigners who came to work after a period of unemployment of 6 months,” notes the Institut Montaigne, which had analyzed the proposal. That same year, Marine Le Pen proposed to “send back foreigners who have not had a job for a year and cannot support themselves.”
What changes in 2026 is the announced scope. The threshold moves from six months to one year. Above all, the measure, as he phrased it Thursday, no longer targets only foreigners who came to work. It includes those who live “solely on social benefits” and would apply regardless of how long they have been in the country. It remains to be seen whether EU nationals, refugees, or French spouses would be affected.
The number of people targeted is therefore difficult to determine. In 2022, Institut Montaigne estimated, using Insee data for 2020, that about 109,000 foreigners had been unemployed for more than a year.
Putting it into practice would require changing the law. In 2022, the institute described the measure as having “significant legal complexity” and being “difficult to implement in practice.” It noted that Ceseda provided for the renewal of a residence permit for a foreign employee who had involuntarily lost their job during the period in which they were receiving benefits. Their right to stay was then aligned with the duration of their unemployment benefits. According to the institute, lawmakers can restrict the right to stay. It is nonetheless bounded by the right to asylum and the right to lead a normal family life, guaranteed by the Constitution and international conventions. Only permits issued for economic reasons, 255,288 as of December 31, 2020, would therefore truly be affected.
European law adds a limit for foreigners who have been settled for a long time. Directive 2003/109/EC protects long-term residents, a status available under certain conditions after five years of legal residence. They can be removed only if they represent “a genuine and sufficiently serious threat to public order or public security,” and that decision “cannot be justified on economic grounds.” The European Convention on Human Rights also requires balancing removal against the person’s private and family life. In 1992, in the Beldjoudi case, the Strasbourg Court thus ruled that the expulsion of an Algerian man born in France and married to a French woman would violate that right.
Undocumented Migrants: Removal Already Provided For By Law
For foreigners in irregular status, removal is already the rule; the difficulty lies in carrying it out. A report from the National Assembly’s finance committee was filed on September 16. According to that document, border police counted 23,549 forced, assisted, or voluntary removals from mainland France in 2025, or 15% of the measures ordered. Its author, MP Charles Rodwell, believes that carrying out all these decisions would require about 100,000 additional removals per year. It would also require 10,400 new places in administrative detention centers, at a cost of around 2 billion euros per year.
Against Jean-François Copé, A Disputed Figure
The debate then pitted him against the LR mayor of Meaux, Jean-François Copé. There, Eric Zemmour claimed that immigration policy over the past thirty years had gone “from 100,000 legal immigrants to 500,000 today.” BFMTV said the claim was false: according to Insee, 97,083 immigrants entered France in 2000 and 347,000 in 2023. The Interior Ministry issued 377,000 first residence permits in 2025. This indicator does not measure the same thing as the entries recorded by Insee.
The former minister accused him of defending “the philosophy of Charles Maurras,” the nationalist theorist of Action Française, rather than that of General de Gaulle. He also accused him of engaging in “the search for a scapegoat.”
With Sarah Knafo, Against Marine Le Pen
This announcement confirms that it is Eric Zemmour, and not Sarah Knafo, who will carry the colors of Reconquête, a question debated within his camp since the spring. A Member of the European Parliament, vice president of the party, and the former journalist’s partner, she was a candidate for mayor of Paris in March. She has also had major success as an author with Le Casse du siècle (Fayard), about public finances. On Thursday, he said, “We will campaign together,” promising her “an eminent role.”
With respect to Marine Le Pen, the break is deliberate. He called the National Rally candidate a “left-wing woman” and ruled out any agreement: “I don’t have the soul of a vassal.” He regrets that she and Bruno Retailleau, president of the Republicans, “reject” a union of the right. He also criticizes the RN for backtracking on banning the veil in public spaces, which he supports.
The balance of power remains unfavorable to him. Elabe tested the 2027 presidential candidates in a survey published on August 29 for BFMTV and La Tribune Dimanche. There, Eric Zemmour received 4% to 4.5% of first-round voting intentions depending on the scenario, compared with 34% to 35.5% for Marine Le Pen. The survey was conducted online from August 26 to 28 among 1,501 people, including 1,378 registered voters. The margin of error is between 1.4 and 3.1 points, and its notice can be consulted with the polling commission. In 2022, Eric Zemmour finished fourth in the first round, with 7.07% of the vote.
To run, he will still need to secure the required 500 endorsements from elected officials. The first round of the presidential election will take place on April 18, 2027, and the second on May 2.