Edouard Philippe in Le Havre, on January 28, 2026. LOU BENOIST/AFP
The upcoming municipal elections are a crucial moment for former French prime minsiter Edouard Philippe, who has called his party, Horizons, "the party of mayors." The party he created at the end of 2021 will take part in its first municipal elections on March 15 and 22, in a high-risk test for Philippe and his presidential ambitions.
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How Edouard Philippe hopes to succeed Macron
To understand why this election matters so much for the party, one must go back to its origins. In 2017, Philippe was appointed prime minister by President Emmanuel Macron, and he took the opportunity to publicly break with the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, which he saw as following an increasingly rightward drift. But while Philippe joined Macron, he did not believe in the president's idea of "overcoming" the traditional left-right divide, nor that new politicians could replace political veterans.
