Nicolas Sarkozy is making a political comeback in France.

French President François Hollande’s ex-girlfriend writes in a tell-all book to be published today that months after their public breakup he was trying to win her back with flowers, dinner invitations, and barrages of text messages.

With hopes of a comeback in jeopardy, the former president is accusing magistrates of a vendetta, writes Alexandria Sage

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s car wheeled out of the court parking lot in the dead of night after he was charged in a corruption probe.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has accused France’s justice system of trying to “humiliate” and “destroy” him, after he was charged in a corruption probe that could spell trouble for his future political ambitions.

The centre has held in Europe with the pro-EU parties taking most of the seats, says Europe Correspondent Ann Cahill.

Centre-right conservative parties are expected to remain the biggest political group in the European Parliament, with Ireland among the eight countries where they will be returned.

France’s anti-immigrant National Front was set to win a record number of town halls as early results showed a rout for President François Hollande’s ruling Socialists in local elections yesterday.

France's governing Socialists have suffered big losses in municipal elections, with the opposition UMP claiming victory, and the far right celebrating further gains.

France’s far-right National Front made gains in municipal elections, sparking calls for left and right-wing parties to stop its advance.

Shock new Swiss laws that target immigration are a cause for concern, writes Kyran Fitzgerald.

French president François Hollande has been hit with a backlash over the manner in which he dumped former first lady Valerie Trierweiler after being caught having a secret affair.

Under pressure French president François Hollande has faced the media over accusations that he is having an affair but he coolly side-stepped giving any details on his personal life.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s hopes of a comeback to the frontline of French politics were given a major boost when corruption charges against the former president were dropped.

US President Barack Obama’s decision to seek congressional authorisation for a military strike on Syria has sparked calls for the French parliament to get the same privilege.

Judges have ordered a Mediterranean villa and other assets to be seized from a French businessman at the centre of a fraud investigation that could weigh on ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy’s hopes of a comeback, sources said.

A woman will become mayor of Paris for the first time in the city’s 2,000-year history, and voters will have a choice of two candidates.

French parliament approved a law allowing same-sex couples to marry and to adopt children, a flagship reform pledge by president François Hollande which sparked often violent street protests and a rise in homophobic attacks.

France has opened a judicial investigation into allegations former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election bid won illicit funds from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has denounced charges against him in connection with a probe into illegal party funding as “unfair and unfounded”.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been charged with taking financial advantage of France’s richest woman as part of a probe into illegal party funding, a move supporters say is aimed at preventing his political comeback.

Nicolas Sarkozy was questioned by magistrates trying to establish whether he received illegal campaign funds from France’s richest woman when he ran for president in 2007.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party was in disarray today after a vote for its next leader produced a razor-thin result – and both candidates claimed victory.

French President Francois Hollande’s Cabinet pushed ahead with a controversial bill today that could see gay marriage legalised early next year, defying vocal opposition in the majority Catholic country from religious leaders, the rural heartland and the conservative opposition.

Francois Hollande is the man in charge after his Socialist Party swept France’s parliamentary election.

With a single tweet, France’s first lady has managed to take a swipe at her husband’s ex, put herself publicly at odds with the president, and thrown a spanner in the works of his Socialist party.

Allies of French President Francois Hollande mobilised today in hopes of securing a crushing parliamentary majority for the Socialists that could bolster him in talks on how to save the embattled euro currency and revive Europe’s economic fortunes.

President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party, bolstered by left-wing allies, is poised to take control of France’s lower house of parliament so he can revamp a country his partisans see as too capitalist and push to save the eurozone through growth.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist challenger François Hollande clashed in their only televised debate last night, seen as the conservative incumbent’s last chance to turn the odds of re-election in his favour.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen delivered a further blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s re-election hopes by refusing to endorse him and telling her 6m supporters to make their own choice at Sunday’s ballot.

Unease is growing in French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP party a week before a presidential election over his lurch to the right in pursuit of supporters of anti-immigration candidate Marine Le Pen.

IN setting a record score for the far right in Sunday’s French presidential election, Marine Le Pen has set the stage for her National Front to try and break into parliament at a legislative election in June.

Socialist challenger Francois Hollande stamped his authority on the French presidential race yesterday, beating Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of polling in which the far right also made major gains.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a personal Twitter account and geared up for a prime-time TV appearance amid expectations he will at last announce his re-election bid.

A French mayor’s plan to erect a statue of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s former supermodel wife Carla Bruni in worker’s attire has angered the opposition and embarrassed the first lady.

France’s main pilots’ union and unions at Air France have called for a strike.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will “actively support” French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a fellow conservative, in his spring campaign to win re-election, said her Christian Democrat (CDU) party in Berlin.

FRENCH lawmakers have easily passed a measure to make it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 by Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide.

French MPs have passed a measure that would make it a crime in France to deny that the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 amounted to a genocide.

SHAMED former French leader Jacques Chirac has been found guilty of corruption and given a suspended jail sentence, becoming France’s first ex-president to be convicted for his crimes.

FORMER French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who gained international renown as France’s spokesman against the war in Iraq, has shaken up the presidential campaign by announcing he’ll run as an independent.

Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who gained international renown as his country’s spokesman against the war in Iraq, has shaken up the presidential campaign by announcing he will run as an independent.

A critical summit of European leaders gets underway in Brussels later in a bid to save the single currency.

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party has rejected as “grotesque” suggestions that Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the victim of a plot to ruin his presidential ambitions.