Former Defense Minister Herve Morin will be a candidate in the 2012 presidential elections, a spokesman said Wednesday, Xinhua reported.
"He believes that the centrist project must be defended during the presidential election, which seems to me a good way of thinking, and so he will be a candidate," Jean-Marie Cavada, spokesman for the centrist party, told television network France 2.
Morin said last week that he would launch a tour in France this year to gather centrists' voices.
Morin was a supporter of Francois Bayrou, the president of the Modem party, before joining the Nicolas Sarkozy camp along with several other centrist leaders, between two rounds of the last election.
He was named defense minister in 2007 and quit the position in November's cabinet reshuffle.