French presidential election Le Pen

Emmanuel Macron is the favorite, but his rival Marine Le Pen is rising in the polls, suggesting the election could be more tightly fought than when the pair ...

Le Pen argues that the two are expensive and inefficient -- she also says wind turbines have scarred the landscape of the traditional French countryside -- so she wants to scrap subsidies for both. Most candidates in the first round backed the kind of nuclear development Macron has already announced, so there is little divergence on this issue. Just shy of 90% of French people were worried about the war in the last week of March, according to Ifop. Given his challengers' patchy record on standing up to Putin, this has likely played in Macron's favor so far. Ahead of the first round of this election, Macron refused to debate his opponents, and he has hardly campaigned himself. But by and large, her economic nationalist stance, views on immigration, skepticism of Europe and position on Islam in France -- she wants to make it illegal for women to wear headscarves in public -- have not changed. Faced with the economic fallout from the pandemic, high energy prices and the war in Ukraine, voters are feeling the pinch, despite generous government support. This is her third shot at the presidency. looked set to be an important referendum on the rising popularity of the French far right. Macron is an ex-investment banker and alumnus of some of France's most elite schools. Macron's election effectively blew up the traditional center of French politics. Both polled under 5% in the first round. Le Pen appeared much more prepared than in the event in 2017, when her poor performance effectively doomed her campaign.

Verdict of public and pundits is that the current president was more convincing than his far-right rival.

Judging by the debate, she did not dispel the doubts.” Le Figaro concluded the debate would not have changed voters’ intentions. Le Monde concluded the debate was once again “a failure” for Le Pen. “Did she give the impression she is ready to govern?” asked Le Parisien in an editorial. Clément Beaune, the Europe minister, accused Le Pen of seeking to organise a Frexit by stealth. The exchange was a rematch of 2017’s TV debate, during which the far-right leader became aggressive. Was Marine Le Pen dominated or passive? About 15.6 million people watched the debate, fewer than in 2017 when 16.6 million viewers tuned in.

A recent TV debate highlighted the ways in which the French presidential election could reshape European politics. A win for Marine Le Pen would pose a ...

In this sense, the French presidential election will shape the future of Europe. Once the French presidential election is over, whoever wins will have to take on this role. She aims to create a union of the bare minimum, and to incrementally destroy even this. On paper, the contest between the candidates appears to be merely a rerun of the 2017 vote. Interestingly, the bar was quite low for her and relatively high for him, as he needed to defend his track record and prove that he was still the best person to take on the job for the next five years. A recent TV debate highlighted the ways in which the French presidential election could reshape European politics.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen take part in an animated contest ahead of Sunday's run-off vote.

It was intolerant and she was pushing millions of compatriots out of the public space on account of their religion, he said. Constitutional change: Another of Marine Le Pen's big policies is for citizens' referendums, which she said were rooted in the yellow-vest or gilets jaunes protests that began early in the Macron presidency. Marine Le Pen retorted that he was a "climate hypocrite". European Union: Marine Le Pen has changed her policy from leaving the EU to seeking change from within it. Ms Le Pen said she had taken Russian money as no French bank would lend to her party. And in the main, he avoided the trap of coming over as too arrogant or technocratic. She snapped back: "I want to give the French their money back." And yet, the president never gave the feeling he was not on solid ground. "We need to give priority to the French in their own country," she said. The sitting president was seen as most presidential, by 53% to 29%, although half of viewers also said he had come across as arrogant. His opponent could make hay with attacks on the inevitable failures of five years in government. But this time, Marine Le Pen was ready from the start and far more composed.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa slammed French presidential candidate Marine ...

“The second round of the French presidential election is not, for us, an election like the others,” Scholz,Sánchez and Costa wrote. “They all equally know little about the real lives of French people. It also follows Wednesday’s highly anticipated debate between the two candidates, in which the incumbent came off as more convincing to voters, according to a snap poll published Thursday.

“Le 9-3”, known by its postal code as a hotbed of violence and radical Islam, had the highest abstention rate in France in the first round ballot on April 10th, ...

More than one million people took to the streets in a show of strength against the extreme right. “You cannot claim that a law banning the headscarf in public is a law against radical Islam.” In a sarcastic moment, Le Pen attacked Macron’s economic record, recalling that he had been called “the Mozart of finance” in the previous campaign. Thursday marked the anniversary of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s qualification for the run-off in the 2002 presidential election. “From a question on the headscarf, you moved to terrorism, returned to Islamism and then to foreigners. Twenty years later, the Le Pens, father and daughter, have reached the gates of the Élysée three times, each time with substantially higher scores. “That is false and dishonest!” Le Pen shot back, saying the RN is reimbursing a €9.4 million loan “cash on the nail every month”. No French bank would loan her money, she added. “You never explain how you will finance your projects,” Macron said. Macron and Le Pen would both rely mainly on nuclear power plants, but she rejects renewable energy sources. “Since the second World War, in international law one rarely recognises territories that are annexed by force,” the French president said. “We’re getting older,” Le Pen replied. Opinion polls indicate that Macron is likely to defeat Le Pen by between eight and 13 percentage points.

The election campaign is in its final days and both candidates have returned to the campaign trail to drum up what support they can before the vote on Sunday.

Her rival, the incumbent President Macron, took one-quarter. Emmanuel Macron remains ahead of his opponent Marine Le Pen in the French presidential race after a heated television debate last night, a poll showed. Marine Le Pen is addressing a rally in Arras, a city in Hauts-de-France, the northernmost region of France.

Marine Le Pen has worked for years at polishing the rough edges of the far-right National Rally, the party her rabble-rousing father Jean-Marie founded a ...

If she wins the presidency on her third try – as no lesser lights than François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac have in the past – Le Pen would become the first woman ever elected president in France. She would also bring the far right to power in the country for the first time in the modern political era. Determined to have another go at the Élysée Palace, Le Pen threw her hat in the ring for a third time in 2022, keen to better her 2017 performance. In 2011, at a National Front party congress in Tours, Jean-Marie Le Pen passed the torch to his daughter after she won a leadership vote handily. Marine Le Pen permanently excluded him from the party in 2015. In the north of France, the once-proud rust belt sapped of its industry and jobs, Le Pen found fertile terrain to sow her ideas. In 1998, she won election as a regional councillor in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais area of northern France. That same year, Le Pen's private life was a flurry of activity, too; she gave birth to her first child followed by a set of twins less than 11 months later. For the young Le Pen, the limelight was harsh: Her parents' messy divorce in the headlines, erotic photos of her mother in Playboy, the insults that rained down when a 15-year-old Marine hit the campaign trail with her father ahead of municipal elections in 1983. Le Pen père thumbed his nose at critics on all fronts – not least those who questioned his daughter's role in the party, rankled by the junior Le Pen's "modernist" stances on subjects like abortion and religion. The new and improved Le Pen insists that Islam is "compatible with the French Republic". And the 2022 version of her National Rally – rebranded in 2018 to underscore the makeover – no longer pledges to pull France out of the euro currency or even the European Union. Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen was born on August 5, 1968, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris. Nicknamed Marine, Jean-Marie Le Pen's youngest child – the third of three girls after Marie-Caroline and Yann – was steeped in politics from infancy. Far from the potshots she was happy to fire off on the presidential campaign trail back in 2012, the "mother of cats" – as she now likes to describe herself – is given to posing with her kitties for the media and for her 2.6 million Twitter followers. Her results speak for themselves: in the first round on April 10, Le Pen added two points to her 2017 score, tallying 23.15 percent of the vote this time to advance to another final.

France goes to the polls this weekend with a far-right candidate on the ballot. Sky News research looks at how extreme her policies are.

Ms Le Pen does seem to be becoming more palatable to the electorate. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done. It also shows she sits to the left of Mr Macron on economic policies. They amount to a set of initiatives that incorporate both left and right-wing elements. It sounds kind of left-wing but it's also extremely authoritarian at the same time." On economic policies, for example, many of her proposals would be considered left of centre.

The election campaign is in its final days and both candidates have returned to the campaign trail to drum up what support they can before the vote on Sunday.

Yes, it’s a terrible feeling to be put in the position, yet again, of having to choose between two candidates you dislike. It changes the fabric of a country. Her rival, the incumbent President Macron, took one-quarter. It changes the course of history. They had to be experienced one day at a time. There was exhausting anger and complete bewilderment.

Ever since its publication in 1954, historian René Remond's classic work Les Droites en France has framed and, at times, enflamed how French historians ...

In 1962, this did not stop then-French President Charles de Gaulle, who famously used this article to change the constitution to allow the direct election of the president by popular suffrage. No less important, Le Pen knows that even if there was a majority in the National Assembly to support her proposal, the Senate, which is not facing elections, would prevent it from going any further. If each of the two legislative chambers—the National Assembly and the Senate—pass the proposed change, they must then meet in a joint session, where the bill requires a three-fifths majority to pass. After becoming president, Le Pen vowed that she would “organize a referendum on the essential questions of the control of immigration, the protection of the French identity, and the primacy of national rights.” In the referendum, the French would vote up or down on “la priorité nationale”: a proposal blocking noncitizens living in France from seeking employment, housing, health care, and social benefits. The oddest offspring, however, was the romantic Bonapartists, dedicated to a ruler who, by channeling the will of the people, guaranteed their equality, glorified their fraternity, and garroted their liberty. Because Le Pen also wants to ditch the principle of jus soli, which confers citizenship of those born on French soil, the number of noncitizens would increase dramatically. The oddest offspring, however, was the romantic Bonapartists, dedicated to a ruler who, by channeling the will of the people, guaranteed their equality, glorified their fraternity, and garroted their liberty. In this campaign, Le Pen has emphasized the issue of pouvoir d’achat (“purchasing power”) over her more traditional focus on immigration. With the French Revolution, not only was the political left born but so too was the right. A growing number of scholars have, of late, insisted that Remond’s analysis is obsolete, superseded by events over the past few decades. With the French Revolution, not only was the political left born but so too was the right. A growing number of scholars have, of late, insisted that Remond’s analysis is obsolete, superseded by events over the past few decades.

President Emmanuel Macron of France has been a crucial partner as Mr. Biden has rebuilt relations with Europe, promoted democracy and forged a coalition in ...

“And if Le Pen did win, it would mean that illiberalism — the politics of racism, of protectionism, would be on the surface.” And the French election shines a bright light on that.” Mr. Macron’s government blamed the Biden administration for the loss of a lucrative submarine contract it had with Australia and was especially angry to learn about the arrangement through a leak to the news media. During the debate on Wednesday, Ms. Le Pen said she supported sanctions against Russia’s financial system and oligarchs but opposed banning imports of Russian oil and gas, saying that the French people should not have to suffer. Biden officials expressed profuse support for France in a flurry of meetings and phone calls, and Mr. Biden called the episode clumsy. “Biden sees this moment as a contest between democracy and autocracy,” he said. Last week, she renewed vows to scale back France’s leadership role in NATO and to pursue “a strategic rapprochement” with Russia after the war with Ukraine has concluded. Mr. Macron was unable to command more than a small plurality of support against several opponents in the first round of voting on April 10. She also sought to deflect charges that she was sympathetic to Russia’s war aims, declaring her “absolute solidarity” with the Ukrainian people. An immigration hard-liner and longtime leader of France’s populist right, Ms. Le Pen has campaigned mainly on domestic issues, including the rising cost of living. “It would send a troubling signal about the overall political health of the Western world.” Her victory could complicate Mr. Biden’s effort to isolate Russia and aid Ukraine. But the very real prospect of a nationalist leading France is also a reminder that the recent period of U.S.-European solidarity on political and security issues like Russia and democracy may be fragile.