French President Francois Hollande decides not to run again

Francois Hollande.
(Image credit: Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images)

French President Francois Hollande announced Thursday he will not seek re-election next year.

This is the first time since 1958, when France's Fifth Republic was created, that an incumbent president has not sought a second term, CNN reports. French voters will head to the polls to vote in spring 2017, and Hollande's Socialist Party now needs to find a candidate to go up against Francois Fillon of the center-right Republican Party and Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front. In 2012, Hollande was victorious over Nicolas Sarkozy, and became France's first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand was re-elected in 1988.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.