“Despite the strong distrust towards politicians, there is a civic and citizen appetite in France” | EUROtoday

NWe are coming into, in the beginning of 2026, a essentially political sequence, which can take us from the municipal elections to the following presidential election. The local weather surrounding these deadlines right this moment is basically marked by a sense of inevitability and discouragement. Fatality within the face of the outcomes of the varied ballots: the die could be forged. Discouragement relating to the French’s relationship with politics: the rupture could be full, mistrust lastingly established, developments extensively documented by opinion surveys.

The upheavals of the world, from Davos to Nuuk by way of kyiv, full this motion and divert our gaze. The results of this double motion is an astonishing political atony: an enormous lack of curiosity within the budgetary debates which are ending, municipal elections that are struggling to impose themselves within the information.

A “funny campaign” begins timidly in a number of giant cities the place some, conscious of all this, search to evacuate any political dimension – a phenomenon all of the extra incomprehensible once we know that mayors are the one elected officers who resist political defiance within the nation (68% confidence, in comparison with 20% for deputies, in accordance with [l’enquête annuelle] “French fractures” 2025).

Fatality and discouragement

Recognizing the existence of this local weather of fatality and discouragement just isn’t the one strategy to learn it. Another path is feasible, by turning our gaze in the direction of the civic and citizen urge for food of the nation. This is what the Institut Montaigne report “Democracy: the new paths of citizenship” exhibits, which relies on the outcomes of a survey carried out with [le cabinet d’études et de conseil] Verian and performed with 3,000 French folks aged 16 and over. This work, whereas it confirms sure indicators of disenchantment and frustration relayed for a number of years, additionally makes it doable to enrich, and even mood, the apocalyptic tone which predominates within the public debate.

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