When standing for office is subsidised, it's time to party

The French parliamentary elections have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of strange political formations. They include the Party of Pleasure; the Union for the Four-day Week; the New Ecologists of the Assembly for Nature and Animals; Eden, Republic and Democracy; the Freedom Party; and the Natural Law Party.

The proliferation of candidates – a total of 8,424 compared with 6,361 in 1997 – has been put down to the impact of public subsidies for political parties.

A 1988 law offers financial aid to all parties with candidates in at least 50 different constituencies (although a single constituency is sufficient for parties whose sole candidates are standing in France's overseas territories). There is a financial incentive to put forward as many candidates as possible. Candidates in this year's elections include a number of colourful figures, among them a Parisian ex-striptease artist, Cindy Lee, whose Party of Pleasure bases most of its policies around the relaxation of sex industry rules, and Nicolas Miguet, who, with more than 15 convictions for fraud and theft to his name, has aroused scepticism by calling his party the Assembly of French Taxpayers.

The case of Jean-Louis Masson illustrates the trend particularly well. In the 1997 elections, his party, the Metz Movement for All, presented only one candidate – in an overseas French constituency. Mr Masson earned himself a disappointing €3.33 (about £2) with only two votes, but when he was elected deputy in Moselle for a different party, he transferred back to his own movement and received an extra €45,000 a year as a result.

Albert Lapeyre, head of the New Ecologists, has been raking in €150,000 a year since 1997; Bernard Frau's Eden party €32,000; Claude Reichmann's Freedom Party €22,000; and Benoît Frappé's Natural Law formation €19,000. This is a particularly unfortunate effect of a law that set out originally to clean up the financing of political parties.

Total state aid available this year amounts to €80m, to be shared between eligible parties. It is divided into two separate strands: all parties who qualify are entitled to €1.66 a vote – provided they present an equal number of men and women – and to a sum of more than €45,000 for each elected deputy.

Luis Favoreu, a French professor of public law, sees the proliferation of candidates and micro-parties as inevitable, but claims that everything gets straightened out in the second round. "The French system has its inconveniences, but is without doubt one of the most democratic," he says.