MY FRENCH ROOTS
Adopted by a long-established farming family rooted for centuries in this stretch of French land between the Jura and the Pays de Gex, I grew up with the memory of those who farmed it before me.
A family of Catholic tradition, raised on a demanding upbringing, open to the wider world, and built around clear values: work, discipline, respect, service, and integrity.
From a very young age, I learned that nothing solid gets built without effort. As a teenager, I worked the harvests, washed dishes, and waited tables to earn my own pocket money. That upbringing gave me a sense of commitment, a taste for work done well, and a clear-eyed sense of what things are really worth.
My story is an unusual one — but it is also a French one.
The story of a child taken in, raised through effort, shaped by reality, and convinced that France remains great when it knows how to pass things on, to protect, and to lift people up.
WHY I AM RUNNING
I am running because I believe our country can be turned around.
I am running because I want France to become the world's leading example of attractiveness, happiness, and well-being.
I am running because it is still possible to restore order, coherence, and dignity at the heart of public life.
A FAMILY ROOTED IN SERVICE TO FRANCE AND TO HUMANITY
It all begins one day in June 1985, in the midst of the civil war tearing through Sri Lanka. That moment marks the start of a journey that would take me to the other side of the world, to a young couple from a country called "France." A stroke of luck even more unlikely than winning the lottery.
Winter, 1985–1986. Far from the city centers of France's major metropolitan areas, I arrived, barely six months old, in what felt like a giant freezer — a place known as the Jura massif.
That is where my French story begins, with an old French family firmly rooted for centuries in the Jura basin.
In that household, I grew up with a simple idea: we never live for ourselves alone. We live with what we are given. We live with what others went through before us. We live with a history that precedes us and that, quietly, shapes who we become.
France, in our home, was never an abstraction. It wasn't just a flag, a ceremony, or a phrase learned by heart. France had a presence.
In my family's history, there is my paternal great-grandfather, wounded in the face by a shell fragment during the First World War. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Military Medal.
And then there is my mother's side of the family: my great-grandfather, a Customs officer decorated for his service, called up during the Second World War to protect French industry.
The family also has ties to the Resistance, through Jean-Paul Alexandre Terrier, a fighter with the Francs-tireurs et partisans, executed by the Germans on January 24, 1944.
Then there is my grandmother, who chose a different form of service: that of knowledge. She devoted her life to teaching, to passing things on, to shaping young minds.
The Republic recognized her service by naming her, on July 28, 1989, a Knight of the Order of Academic Palms for services rendered to National Education. My mother, a schoolteacher in her own right, stayed true to that same patient and essential calling.
My father, for his part, followed a more international path of service. In the 1970s, he worked on developing migration statistics for the European Community, then for the International Metalworkers' Federation, now known as IndustriALL Global Union. His career later led him into the heart of international organizations in Geneva, where, far from the noise and the grand pronouncements, the balances of the world — of labor, of peoples — are so often quietly built.
That is the family history that shaped me. I was born into turmoil. I grew up rooted in France. I was adopted, and that adoption gave me not just a family, but a place in the history of those who protected France.
From all these lives, I drew one simple conviction: a country only stands through what it passes down — through work, courage, loyalty, a sense of the collective, and respect for human dignity.
It is this inheritance, built of quiet honor and steady loyalty, that I will carry to the heart of the presidency.
EXECUTIVE PROFILE: MY VISION FOR THE WORLD OF WORK AND THE ECONOMY
I built my expertise in some of the most demanding environments there are: countries at war, States in crisis, institutional collapse, countries facing financial breakdown.
My vision of the economy is that of a single, indivisible system. The public sector and the private sector, employees and executives, government bodies and businesses — all of it forms one and the same body.
My specialty is rebuilding the structure of a State so that it functions with coherence, efficiency, and fairness. My core conviction is that the wealth that gets created must benefit the people who create it.
As President, I want to bring this expertise and these years of experience to the service of our country. My concrete goal is for every worker to see a substantial rise in net pay, topped up by variable profit-sharing extended to every employee. In exchange for lighter tax and social-security charges — made possible in large part by transferring wealth to workers — public aid to businesses will be eliminated.
The economy must also serve the country's internal security. It is in that spirit that I spent years working in countries in crisis or in the grip of armed conflict, designing economic systems capable of identifying and cutting off the direct or indirect financing of organized crime and armed groups.
In those crisis settings, I saw the same pattern play out time and again: psychological and physical pressure on populations hollows out the economic fabric from within. It pushes workers, entrepreneurs, and families to flee, whether they are well-off or barely getting by. What gets called a "migration crisis" is, more often than not, really a crisis of confidence — a population losing faith in the State's ability to protect them and help them thrive.
La France connaît aujourd’hui sa propre forme de cette fuite, celle des talents, des jeunes, des entrepreneurs, des retraités qui choisissent de vivre et de construire ailleurs. Ce n’est pas une fatalité. C’est le symptôme d’un système qui ne permet plus de vivre en toute sérénité, qui fiscalise trop, et qui ne protège plus suffisamment.
En tant que Président, j’appliquerai ces connaissances et ces compétences à l’échelle de notre nation, pour enrayer la fuite des talents, de la jeunesse, des entrepreneurs et des retraités. Mon objectif est de créer un climat national prospère, à fiscalité faible, avec une richesse transmise à ceux qui travaillent, permettant un système de santé et des institutions en adéquation avec la réalité factuelle et non avec une vision dogmatique de ce qui peut ou doit être fait.
Enrayer la fuite. Recréer l’envie de rester, de construire, d’investir en France. C’est un engagement de méthode autant que de volonté.
