This is one of the conditions necessary to stand for the presidential election in France: to obtain the sponsorship of 500 elected officials.
This Monday, Marine Le Pen assures this Monday on BFMTV that she is encountering difficulties in collecting these signatures.
"I paddle, like everyone else I think," said the elected representative of the National Rally (RN).
“I try to move forward thinking about the worst,” she says.
But she also tempers by specifying: "As we speak, I have no reason to worry".
"It does absolutely nothing for the functioning of our democracy"
Marine Le Pen adds "think about other candidates".
She asks the head of state, Emmanuel Macron, to take steps to change the law and ensure that the list of sponsors is no longer made public.
“It is the publication of the sponsorship of mayors that allows a number of people, who are not Democrats, to put pressure on them.
It does absolutely nothing for the functioning of our democracy, except that it hinders it.
"
Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) entrusts "row" to find the 500 sponsorships for the presidential election pic.twitter.com/KZKiQZUv5q
- BFMTV (@BFMTV) November 8, 2021
The purpose of this collection of sponsorships is to limit the number of applications.
The Vie-publique site, managed by the Legal and Administrative Information Department, recalls the list of elected officials who can sponsor a candidate.
They are about 42,000 and can only grant one signature.
While the municipalities are around 35,000 in France, mayors form the bulk of the contingent of potential signatories, but other elected officials can also provide support.
At least 30 overseas departments or communities
These are the French deputies, senators and representatives in the European Parliament. The delegated mayors of delegated and associated municipalities, mayors of the arrondissements of Paris, Lyon and Marseille, the presidents of the deliberative bodies of metropolises, urban communities and agglomeration communities, presidents of communities of communes, councilors of Paris and Lyon, departmental and regional councilors, territorial councilors (Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon), or even elected members of the assemblies of certain territories, in particular Corsica and Overseas -mer, advisers to the Assembly of French people living abroad or the presidents of consular councils.
Another condition, geographic, must be met to validate signatures.
"In order to avoid applications linked to the defense of purely local interests", according to the words of the administration, "the sponsorships must come from elected officials from at least 30 different overseas departments or communities, without exceed one tenth, ie 50 for the same department or the same community ”.
