On Saturday, Sarkozy announced he would resign from his current position as the head of France's center-right Les Republicains party and later confirmed his intention to stand in the 2017 presidential election. In November, his party will hold primaries in order to choose a sole candidate to represent the party in the election. Juppe is considered to be Sarkozy's main rival for the nomination, among a field of about a dozen party members.
"I think that Nicolas Sarkozy would be a better competitor than Alain Juppé against Marine Le Pen because Mr. Sarkozy is tougher than Juppé regarding immigration topics and also is in favor of renewing a strong partnership with Russia," Aymeric Chauprade, who left the National Front last year and now is an independent right-wing politician, said.
"[Sarkozy's] main achievements are reforms to the economy. He really improved and simplified French bureaucracy," the French lawmaker said, when asked about Sarkozy's strong points that may attract voters, while adding that his main mistake was "not to govern according his own views and being too open to the left wing of the political landscape."
Most opinion polls in France predict that Marine Le Pen, who is twice as popular as the current president Francois Hollande, will easily make to the second round of the French presidential elections but will ultimately be defeated by either Juppe or Sarkozy.
Nicolas Sarkozy was president in 2007-2012 and during his tenure as a head of state he pushed through measures to curb irregular immigration and also saw though unpopular, but arguably necessary reforms, including raising the retirement age from 60 to 62, relaxing the 35-hour working week and altering the tax system to encourage overtime and home ownership.
