Manuel Valls

Days later, Hollande’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, resigned his post and declared his intention to pursue the Socialist nomination for the presidency. The presidential race had already experienced one surprise, when the Republicans (formerly the UMP) resoundingly closed the door on Nicolas Sarkozy’s political comeback ambitions. Sarkozy finished a distant…

…Jean-Marc Ayrault with interior minister Manuel Valls. French voters continued to express their dissatisfaction with Hollande in May 2014, when the Socialists finished a distant third behind the National Front and the UMP in European Union parliamentary elections. Valls characterized the result as an “earthquake,” an expression of staunch Euroskepticism…

In February 2015 Prime Minister Manuel Valls was forced to invoke Article 49 of the French constitution, a rarely used measure that allows a bill to pass without the consent of parliament on the condition that the government is then subjected to a vote of confidence. Valls easily survived that…