Ahead of the 2026 municipal elections, the few candidates and elected officials with disabilities demand to be taken seriously rather than treated as symbolic figures. A recent study counts just 102 disabled elected officials out of over 520,000 in France. A December 2025 reform aims to better fund aids for exercising mandates, but not for campaigning.
People with disabilities remain almost entirely absent from the French political landscape. According to Cyril Desjeux, coordinator of the HandiPPolitique participatory research project run by the Handéo association since 2023, a census based on local press from 2020 to 2025 identifies only 102 disabled elected officials, across all mandates, out of more than 520,000 in France.
Matthieu Annereau, a 47-year-old visually impaired Renaissance elected official in Saint-Herblain (Loire-Atlantique), exemplifies these challenges. As the head of the right and center list for the March 15 and 22 municipal elections, he also chairs the National Association for Considering Disability in Public and Private Policies. He recalls a discriminatory remark during his first candidacy: “A blind person, why not a goat?” He also faced material obstacles, such as at his first Nantes metropolitan council meeting in 2014, where documents were not available in digital format.
“Now, I am established in the political landscape, I have done two terms and I am head of the opposition, but at the time when I was a simple candidate, someone said in a meeting: ‘A blind person, why not a goat?’”
Despite this, Annereau persists and regrets that “many elected officials say that inclusion is important at school, or at work, but do not apply it in the political world.”
A reform passed in December 2025 aims to improve funding for technical and human aids to exercise an elective mandate. However, it does not cover campaign expenses, leaving disabled candidates facing additional barriers to run in the 2026 municipal elections.
