Do we like them?

Do we like François Hollande?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record on LGBTQ+ rights and climate, with one real stain on Roma evictions, and a thin file overall.

Hollande is the Socialist who beat Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 and served as France's president until 2017. He is now back in the game: he has been quietly building a 2027 run, and the press has been tracking his moves since the spring.

The big one for this page is marriage equality. He made it a promise of his presidency and his government pushed it through in 2013, despite huge street protests. When Sarkozy talked about rewriting the law in 2014, Hollande answered that it was becoming more accepted, so he stood by it when it was politically costly.

On the planet, he was the president who hosted the 2015 Paris climate conference, and he kept defending the deal in speeches afterwards. It is a real credential, even if green critics said his domestic follow-through was patchy.

The harm check is where the asterisk lives. Human Rights Watch criticised his government for Roma camp evictions that carried on after he had attacked Sarkozy's policy, and it pointed to a promise of no evictions without solutions. That is a contested record on migrants, not a campaign against anyone, and we found no harmful words of his own on LGBTQ+ people, women or climate.

We couldn't open full articles for this one, so treat this as a lighter read than usual. On the evidence we have, he sits on the right side of the big calls, with a real blemish on Roma policy. Where you land on his 2027 comeback will depend on how much weight you give that blemish.