Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his first political appearance since losing power, staging an appeal to hundreds of conservative lawmakers yesterday to help save the UMP party from financial ruin.

Greeted by a mass of fans as he arrived at UMP headquarters, Sarkozy called for donations to prop up the party after France’s top legal body ruled last week that it overshot spending limits on his failed 2012 re-election campaign and must repay €11 million in state subsidies.

While Sarkozy denied the meeting marked the start of his political comeback, the former president has made clear that he is mulling a re-election bid for 2017 and opinion polls show more than half of UMP supporters want him to do so.

Many on the right see Sarkozy as the only person who can reunite a party that fractured into two feuding camps, one with a hardline stance on immigration and the other more moderate, after his May 2012 defeat to Socialist Francois Hollande.

“This is not my political comeback,” Sarkozy tweeted as the meeting began – his first statement on Twitter since his election defeat.

Recent surveys by pollster Ifop show only 40 per cent of voters want Sarkozy back as President, but among UMP supporters 58 per cent want him to run in 2017, leagues ahead of his closest rival and former prime minister, Francois Fillon, at 16 per cent.