France's leftists win mayoral elections in largest cities

Leftists retained control of France's three largest cities while the far right failed to take any major urban centres in Sunday's municipal elections, closely watched for an indication of next year's presidential race.

The far right sees 2027 as its best chance yet to seize power, as voters choose a successor to centrist leader Emmanuel Macron. They won several medium-sized southern enclaves, but failed to capture any major prizes in the local polls, despite predictions.

Most of France's almost 35,000 villages, towns and boroughs elected municipal leaders in a first round last weekend, but the races went to run-offs in about 1,500 communes, including bigger urban centres.

In the capital, 48-year-old civil servant Emmanuel Gregoire's victory extends the Socialists' quarter-century rule of Paris.

Second city Marseille, where leftist incumbent Benoit Payan presented himself as a bulwark against the far-right National Rally (RN), comfortably re-elected its mayor.

And in the city of Lyon, the Greens' Gregory Doucet narrowly prevailed over former football club owner Jean-Michel Aulas, who had been favoured in the polls. Businessman Aulas denounced "irregularities" and said he would be filing an appeal.

- 'Fierce' battle for France -

In Paris, the deputy to outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo celebrated his victory on Sunday by hopping on one of the city's iconic rental bikes to cycle to city hall.

"Paris has decided to stay true to its history," a beaming Gregoire told a cheering crowd, as he won the Socialists a fifth consecutive term in the city of two million people.

He pledged to stand up to the right and far right in the run-up to the 2027 election.

"The battle for France will be fierce," he said. "Paris will be the heart of the resistance against this alliance of the right, which seeks to take away what we hold most precious and fragile: the simple joy of living together."

The Socialists also kept Lille and Rennes and took Pau in the southwest from centrist former prime minister Francois Bayrou.

Another ex-premier, centrist Edouard Philippe, was re-elected by the northern port city of Le Havre.

Philippe, who has already declared his candidacy for the presidential race, is seen as one of the strongest opponents to the RN's potential pick -- whether Marine Le Pen, 57, or her 30-year-old lieutenant Jordan Bardella.

"There are reasons to hope," Philippe told supporters.

"We, the people of Le Havre, say this to the French today: yes, there are reasons to hope in our creative and ambitious youth, capable of imagining and building a new world that is more respectful of human beings than our own, more mindful of our planet and our future," he said.

- 'Just the beginning' -

Le Pen's party failed to score big wins in the south, with a right-wing candidate beating the RN in the naval port city of Toulon.

But the far-right party claimed a number of smaller areas, including Carcassonne, Menton and Cannes.

An ally of the far right, Eric Ciotti, won in the southern city of Nice, France's fifth largest.

RN party leader Bardella claimed Nice as a win for his own party.

"Tonight's successes are just the beginning," he said.

"The RN and its allies have never had so many elected representatives across French territory," he added.

An RN mayor was re-elected last Sunday in the southern city of Perpignan, which has 120,000 inhabitants.

The decision by the Socialists and Greens to ally with the hard left failed to bear much fruit, including in Toulouse, France's fourth-largest city.

There, the France Unbowed (LFI) party lost to the right, exit polls showed.

But the hard left saw a mayor elected in the economically depressed city of Roubaix on the Belgian border.

An LFI mayor also won in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis of around 150,000 residents last week.

Overall election turnout stood at 57 percent, the country's lowest in local polls bar the Covid pandemic-affected last edition in 2020.

burs-ah/lb/tc