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Third-party candidate to stand for French president
Nov 6, 2011, 11:46 GMT
Paris - A former French defence minister and eurosceptic has announced he will run for president in next year's election.
Jean-Pierre Chevenement told Le Parisien newspaper on Sunday that France's only future lay in re-industrialisation, and that the European Union should be reconfigured as a looser confederation.
'We are in the eye of a cyclone,' he warned on French television on Saturday night, as the 72-year old parliamentarian announced his candidacy.
The Socialist Party has chosen Francoise Hollande as its presidential candidate for the 2012 election, while incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to run again, despite suffering low opinion poll ratings.
Chevenement, a former member of the Socialist Party, was defence minister from 1988 to 1991, and from 1997-2000 he headed the interior ministry.
He stood unsuccessfully in the 2002 presidential election. He is head of the Citizen and Republic Movement.
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