Provokes the French to run after the requirement (7)
I believe the answer is:
needles
'provokes' is the definition.
(needling is a kind of provoking)
'the french to run after the requirement' is the wordplay.
'the french' becomes 'le' ('the' in French).
'to run' becomes 's' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'after' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'the requirement' becomes 'need' ('need' can be a synonym of 'requirement').
'le'+'s'='les'
'les' put after 'need' is 'NEEDLES'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for needles that I've seen before include "Is annoying" , "Christmas tree leaves" , "They may play LPs" , "landmark" , "Stacks of chalk" .)