On 8 October 2026, Émile Servan-Schreiber, founder of The Forecasting Machine and CEO of Hypermind, announced a collaboration with Institut Montaigne for France’s 2027 presidential debate. The institute’s programme, Les repères de Montaigne : 25 recommandations pour la France, brings together policy notes intended to help citizens and candidates assess the country’s choices. TFM’s contribution concerns the forthcoming 25th note: what the next government could do in the opening months of its term, and what might follow from those actions.
Institut Montaigne confirms the partnership on the programme’s official methodology page. It says TFM’s probabilities will help evaluate the effects of policy actions that the institute identifies as priorities, and anticipate difficulties that could arise. Servan-Schreiber’s announcement is clear about the stage of the work: the final note is still being developed.
A collection of policy choices for the 2027 campaign
Institut Montaigne is an independent, nonpartisan think tank founded in 2000. It launched the Repères programme on 6 October 2026. The collection is organised around four ambitions: protecting the country, creating wealth, sustaining life together, and putting decisions into practice. Subjects range from security and energy to education, housing, healthcare and the functioning of the state.
The first 23 thematic notes follow a common structure. They establish the facts and constraints, examine proposals already in public debate, then set out Institut Montaigne’s own recommendations with their costs and conditions for implementation. The institute says the project is intended to inform choices across the campaign rather than prescribe a vote.
The programme combines several kinds of evidence. Verian contributes opinion research and a measure of citizens’ acceptance of reforms. Institut Enterritoires brings perspectives from people working in France’s regions. TFM’s role is the probabilistic assessment of policy consequences in the final note. Those contributions serve different purposes: public acceptance and an estimate of what an action may produce are distinct questions.
The 25th note: the next government’s room to act
The partnership page identifies note 25 as Début de mandat, passer à l’action — the start of the term, moving to action. Page 14 of the institute’s note of intent gives the fuller description reproduced in Servan-Schreiber’s attached image. It looks hypothetically at the opening months of the next executive term, considering different possible parliamentary configurations and the room each would leave the government to act.
The same passage says the note will examine the possible effects of selected major measures in partnership with TFM, drawing on multiple datasets to estimate how executive actions may be perceived and what results they may have. The methodology page describes TFM as producing probabilities through a collective of AI systems. It does not identify the measures, datasets, questions or resulting estimates in advance.
The emphasis on parliament makes the exercise a question about implementation as well as policy intention. In the institute’s proposed framework, the next government’s options depend on the institutional setting it faces. A measure can therefore be assessed alongside the conditions under which a government would attempt it. This is the scope described for the note; its conclusions remain to be published.
What has been published, and what is still to come
The institute’s launch release records 23 notes published on 6 October, with two to follow: one on public finances and one on priority actions at the start of the term. The note of intent says their later publication will allow the institute to take account of the 2027 budget discussions. At our 9 October check, the official catalogue still labelled both as forthcoming. The published notes can be downloaded free of charge from the programme’s official site.
Girardin’s case for probabilities in government
Servan-Schreiber framed the announcement with a passage from Émile de Girardin. It can be checked in La politique universelle : décrets de l’avenir, third edition, published in 1855, on page 19:
Le calcul des probabilités appliqué à la vie des nations […] est le fondement de toute haute politique.
Émile de Girardin, La politique universelle, third edition, 1855, p. 19; excerpt
In our translation: “The calculation of probabilities applied to the life of nations […] is the foundation of all high politics.” Girardin went on to argue that the quality of that calculation matters to the quality of politics, before the phrase Servan-Schreiber placed at the centre of his announcement:
Gouverner, c’est prévoir
Émile de Girardin, La politique universelle, third edition, 1855, p. 19; excerpt
In our translation: “To govern is to foresee.” Servan-Schreiber’s hope is that TFM’s reasoned probabilities can help guide the next government’s action. That is the ambition he expressed, rather than a result already demonstrated by the unpublished note.
For related discussion of forecasting in the campaign, see our coverage of TFM’s digital-policy forecasts on POL/N. Our article on the Renault Foundation’s automotive-policy report covers another use of probabilities in assessing policy choices. The Repères collaboration brings that question to the possible actions of France’s next government; the final analysis is still ahead.
