"The response seems very timid": what place for the environment in the presidential campaign?

Huge wildfires in Gironde, in the Landes and in the Var. Repeated heatwaves across the country. A severe drought hitting agriculture hard. This summer, France has been severely tested by the elements.

Already last winter, the country went through several months marked by a series of weather fronts and storms (Goretti, Ingrid, Nils, Pedro), causing major flooding across France.

With only a few months to go before the next presidential election, environmental issues are set to take on an unprecedented role in the political debate. Long carried by the left, the topic has become unavoidable, forcing the right and the far right to get to grips with it.

Because today, "given the delays and the seriousness of the situation, France no longer has a choice: it must adapt, and quickly", warns the NGO Réseau Action Climat, which challenges the record of recent successive governments that "have not taken the necessary measures to adapt the country to the effects of climate change".

Yet warnings have been issued for several years. As early as 2013, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) stated that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal and, since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia".

"The years 1983 to 2012 are probably the warmest 30-year period the Northern Hemisphere has experienced in 1,400 years", the report also noted.

Politicians out of touch

An issue that an increasing number of citizens are taking on board. In a survey published on Monday 24 August (source in French), Ipsos reveals that 64% of French people felt "anxiety or fear" for the health of their loved ones and 48% for their own health during the summer of 2026.

The polling institute also reports that the French "are looking first and foremost for solutions from the public authorities": 79% of respondents want public measures to help the population cope with heatwaves.

For its part, a study by Ademe published last year estimated that 6.3 million people in France are moderately eco-anxious, showing early symptoms that should not be allowed to worsen. "2.1 million are likely to be highly eco-anxious, with intense and chronic symptoms", and "420,000 of them have mental health that is genuinely at risk", the study (source in French) stated.

The problem is that they are not necessarily being heard by political leaders. "Most parties and presidential candidates seem out of touch with the day-to-day realities of French people who have been severely affected" by these events, says Anne Bringault, programme director at Réseau Action Climat, speaking to Euronews.

"Faced with an unprecedented challenge for humanity and for biodiversity, with the many deaths caused by heatwaves, economic losses, particularly for farmers, homes destroyed by fires and parched nature, the political response looks very timid and nowhere near matching French people's expectations or their perception of the tangible impacts of climate change", she adds.

Speaking on France Inter (source in French) on Tuesday, Jean-Marc Jancovici, founder and president of the Shift Project think tank, was even more scathing, arguing that the political class is "in a form of denial" when it comes to climate change.

Hidden causes

A view shared by Eva Morel, secretary-general of the NGO QuotaClimat. "There is a feeling that elections are precisely the moments when ecology struggles to find a way through", she laments to Euronews, before attempting to explain the reasons for this lack of interest. "In fact, they themselves are not encouraged to understand and to put forward ambitious ideas on this topic, because the media reception of their statements is generally quite favourable on the subject."

She goes further still. "Above all, we cannot hope for a constructive debate on the issue if, when climate disasters occur, we talk only about the facts and do not try to understand the underlying factors – both the causes and the structural solutions that would make it possible to address them", stresses Eva Morel.

She then cites the events of summer 2026, which sparked discussions focusing "mainly on observations and not necessarily on explanations". "For instance, we talked more about climate, which is almost inevitable. But we talked less about fossil fuels", she regrets. "From there, we cannot really expect the proposals put forward by the various candidates to be convincing when it comes to tackling the root of the problem", the expert continues.

Politicians doing... politics

"Which of the candidates puts the fact that the world is going to change at the heart of their programme? None of them," criticises Jean-Marc Jancovici. In his view, the programmes of declared or potential candidates in the next presidential election are devoid of coherent environmental measures. "You find inconsistencies everywhere", says the president of the Shift Project.

For Eva Morel, this situation can be explained in part by how difficult it is, in "a political system that rewards demagoguery, to expect candidates to address a crisis that profoundly destabilises citizens' ways of life and still offer a desirable project".

"Right-wing and centrist parties stay firmly in their lanes, like Édouard Philippe, who chose to highlight immigration issues during" his trip to Mayotte ", says Anne Bringault. Eva Morel agrees: "But even when it comes to adaptation, the right as a political family still does not consider it a political issue."

As for the left, "electoral opportunism, in a context of competition to win over green voters, seems to play a significant role", continues Anne Bringault.

"What we see today is that the environmental platforms of left-wing parties are still more substantial than those of the right, and that has been the case for several years now," adds Eva Morel. "What we find interesting is the extent to which political discourse mirrors scientific discourse. And today, that seems to be happening more on the left."

The RN, king of disinformation

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Rassemblement National "is hurriedly trying to throw on a green outfit by advocating simplistic solutions that are barely realistic financially and technically, such as rolling out air conditioning everywhere", analyses Anne Bringault.

"In reality, they focus on whatever is making headlines. And since climate is now part of the hot news, they focus on it. It is purely opportunistic," adds Eva Morel, who notes that the RN has rowed back on its statements questioning the credibility of the IPCC or the reality of global warming, even if that "is not enough". "The problem is that their political software has not integrated environmental issues at all. They do not have proposals that would genuinely protect people from the consequences, let alone address the causes."

She also accuses the party led by Jordan Bardella of relaying, in her view, misleading information. "These narratives are deliberately orchestrated because they work with public opinion, instrumentalising moments that generate a lot of attention. [...] It has been shown that this is an obstruction strategy that works. It blocks the action of public policies that are supposed to be effective", explains the expert, who cites the example of low-emission zones.

"And what we fear is that, alongside this obstruction, there is also a process of discrediting political opponents and environmental defenders by demonising them. And by doing that, they push solutions away from the problem, even though the problem itself is very visible", concludes Eva Morel.