The challenge launched by Manuel Valls in his official candidacy speech in the center-left primaries is an international and markedly "leftist" challenge, from which the candidate will emerge in the presidential elections scheduled for next spring, after the withdrawal of outgoing president François Hollande : “I want to fight against the right and its program – said Valls, who will resign tomorrow from the office of prime minister, which he held since March 31, 2014 -, which proposes old recipes from the 80s. I want an independent France, inflexible on its values, which stands up to Xi Jinping's China, Vladimir Putin's Russia, Donald Trump's America and Erdogan's Turkey”.
Valls, 54, thanked his president Hollande, acknowledging the work done together in the last two and a half years: "I want to express my affection for François Hollande and say that during my term as prime minister I did my duty, in the absolute loyalty".
The socialist candidate, born in Barcelona in 1962, has been a French citizen since 1982. A member of the Socialist Party since the age of 17, he was mayor of Évry from 2001 to 2012, deputy mayor of Argenteuil from 1989 to 1998 and deputy of the first constituency of Essonne since 2002. He also held the position of regional councilor of Île-de-France from 1986 to 2002, before becoming Minister of the Interior under the Ayrault government, in 2012, at the beginning of Hollande's presidency.
