April 21, 2022 at 10:33 am
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No EU flag in sight at Le Pen’s campaign rallies.
On Sunday (February 24), French voters will choose in the second round of voting between far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, who leads the centrist movement.
Who will win the French general election, also known as the “line battle”, has drawn close international attention.
Macron and Le Pen have two very different visions for France over the next five years – both at home and abroad.
EU officials worry that the outcome of the election contest might determine the future of the bloc; the United States and China are also following closely because Le Pen’s words regarding the United States and China are also unusual.
What is indisputable is that if Le Pen wins, it will at least cause shock waves in Brussels, and possibly even the global landscape.
Billing, Immigration and Policing
When the rising cost of living is the number one issue in French elections, far-right Marine Le Pen has made it a focal point of her campaign. But her other big plan is to push for social housing, make jobs and welfare a priority for French nationals, and pledge to fight Islamism. She told her supporters that victory had never been closer.
Le Pen has pledged to take a series of measures to lower the cost of living, including eliminating all income taxes for under-30s, cutting the value-added tax on fuel from 20% to 5.5%, letting businesses raise wages by 10%, and reducing teachers’ pay each year for the next five years. Wages increased by 3%. She also wants to cut motorway tolls by 15% through re-nationalisation and privatise public broadcasting by scrapping the €138 annual TV licence fee.
The centrist, led by President Macron, is trying to unite voters. After five years in power, he hopes to appeal to voters on the left and the mainstream right. Macron’s government, which has spent billions of euros to limit rising energy bills, has suggested that employers should be allowed to offer tax-free bonuses of up to 6,000 euros to employees; he has also pledged to increase teachers’ salaries and prepare to abolish television licence fees.
On immigration and policing, Le Pen wants a referendum on immigration and plans to impose strict rules on entering and becoming French. She also wants French nationals or families with at least one French parent to have access to welfare housing and social services over foreigners, under a highly controversial proposal, Priorité nationale. She initially even favored a referendum on the death penalty before realizing it was unconstitutional.
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Macron landed a landslide victory over Le Pen in 2017, but will it be the same in 2022?
Le Pen also wants to ban women from wearing the hijab in public, saying they would be fined if they did. She said the Islamic veil was a so-called uniform imposed by people with radical Islamism. But France, which has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, might play a big role in the second round as 69 percent voted for far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round.
Macron, meanwhile, has no plans to change current policies, and has made clear his opposition to Le Pen’s policies by praising a young woman wearing a headscarf, who describes herself as a feminist.
EU and Eurozone
Marine Le Pen insists she has no secret ‘Brexit’ agenda.
But opponents say her policy will put France’s position in the EU at risk; supporters argue that Brussels has failed to learn from Brexit.
Macron called the election a European referendum, arguing that Europe protects France from crises and wars, accusing his opponents of wanting to leave the European Union the same way France would leave the euro zone, but afraid to speak out.
Le Pen was openly in favor of taking France out of the European Union in 2012, but she then dropped that position following 2017, when she said she wanted to leave the euro zone. In the 2022 election, she has played down her opposition to the EU in particular, even though Macron’s camp says Brexit is her ultimate plan.
Sylvie Kaufman of French newspaper Le Monde said Le Pen now said she wanted to stay in the EU but would try to change it from within to achieve a Europe of sovereign states.
Le Pen also vowed to end all cooperation with Germany, including military tank and fighter jet projects, expressing hope that France will become a truly influential power. An admirer of Brexit, she has spoken of freeing France from “the shackles of Brussels”, while denying she has any plans to leave the European Union.
Unlike the UK, France was an eventual founding member of the EU and is now its second-largest financial contributor.
Le Pen wants to slash France’s contribution to the EU, tighten border controls and hold a referendum on ending “uncontrolled” immigration. The aforementioned policies, including prioritizing the French people’s access to welfare, social housing and jobs, appear to be in direct contradiction to the free movement of people in the EU and the primacy of EU law.
If Le Pen wins, it will cause huge shock waves in Brussels.
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Polls for the 2022 French presidential election say many left-wing voters support neither Macron nor Le Pen.
Russia, NATO, USA and China
Le Pen has been critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but her reliance on Russia for bank loans to her party and her friendly relationship with Putin have not been forgotten. Her campaign had to deny producing 1.2 million electoral pamphlets following a photo showed her shaking hands with the Russian leader before the 2017 election.
Le Pen is also not a fan of NATO. She advised France to leave its “unified command” while remaining in the group, as it did from 1966 to 2009. She said she would not follow the U.S. like General Charles de Gaulle and that there should be a strategic reconciliation between NATO and Russia following the Ukraine war.
Le Pen also said at a news conference that the U.S. Biden administration was too “aggressive” toward China, and suggested that the U.S. was leading Europe to become China’s enemy.
Incumbent President Emmanuel Macron played an important diplomatic role during the war in Ukraine, when France held the rotating EU presidency.
This initially favoured Macron in French polls. But Macron admitted he wasn’t fully focused on the presidential race, holding his first large rally just eight days before the first round of voting.