French elections 2017: Benoît Hamon campaigning in Brussels

The French socialist candidate, Benoît Hamon, will host tonight a political meeting in Brussels.

The first round of the French presidential election will take place in one month time, on April 23. Following last week’s Dutch elections, the French election will be key on the future of the European Union. As more than 1.7 million of French citizens are registered abroad (more than 150,000 only in Belgium), the candidates pay attention to campaign out of the hexagone.

Benoît Hamon, the socialist candidate, has then decided to meet with the French electors who live in Belgium today at 14, rue Dusquenoy at 6.00 pm (close to the Gare centrale). Several hundreds of attendees (French or not) are expected to be there. Mr. Hamon will hold this political meeting together with Thomas Piketty, a French economist, and Yannick Jadot, a French green politician. Elio di Rupo, former Belgian Prime-Minister and head of the Belgian socialist party will also participate in this event.

Campaigning in Brussels makes sense and Benoît Hamon is not the first candidate to come to the Belgian capital to introduce his political project. Although Emmanuel Macron was not candidate yet, Politico organised a public event on 18 April 2016, and the former minister of economy presented the political movement he had just set up few days before, En marche.

The french presidential election results are unpredictable. The traditional bipartism seems to be over today, as five candidates could get more than 10% of the votes. Both the far right-wing candidate, Marine Le Pen, and the right wing candidate, François Fillon, have been suspected to be involved in political scandals over the last few months. They are however still running for the presidency, and Marine Le Pen could receive the greatest number of votes in the first round, according to some polls. On the other hand, Emmanuel Macron was still totally unknown few years ago and it seems he might win the election. Benoît Hamon, as well as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the two main left-wing candidates, were not able to agree on a common candidature and different opinion polls predict they will not be in the second round.

The political polls have not been very accurate last year, as both Brexit and the Trump’s election were not predicted to happen. One month. Be patient!