Macron Steps Up Warnings over French Far Right before First-round Vote

By Staff, Agencies

Emmanuel Macron has ramped up his warnings of the danger posed by Marine Le Pen before the first-round vote in France’s presidential election this weekend, as he acknowledged he had not managed to contain all voters’ fears and hold back the far right during his time in office.

As Macron campaigns to become the first French president in 20 years to serve a second term, he has often been reminded of his 2017 victory speech in front of the Louvre where, after defeating Le Pen with 66% of the vote, he promised to ensure people had “no more reason to vote for extremes.”

Polls suggest he could once again go through to a runoff against Le Pen after this Sunday’s vote, and that she would significantly close the gap on him in a 24 April final round, with a Harris poll this week putting Macron on 51.5% to Le Pen’s 48.5%.

Le Pen has risen steadily in the polls in recent days, boosted by her promises to cut VAT on fuel in response to the cost of living crisis. Her political opponents have continued to warn that her anti-immigration project to prioritize native French people over non-French for housing, jobs and benefits, and to ban the Muslim headscarf from all public spaces, is xenophobic, racist and against the French constitution.

In a front-page interview with Le Figaro on Thursday, Macron was asked whether he bore part of the responsibility for the high support for the far right in the polls. Macron said he believed his government had “succeeded in attacking” certain factors of the far-right vote by lowering unemployment, creating jobs and beginning a process whereby factories opened after long years of deindustrialization.

“But when you lead, govern or are president, you always have a part of responsibility,” he added. “On immigration, the results are insufficient, but we have reinforced border protections and hardened entry conditions to our territory in a context where the flow has considerably increased … due to the international context.”

Macron said the far right in France was still “fundamentally” the same: it attacked the Republic, had a base of antisemitism, “very clear xenophobia, and ultraconservative aims.”

Support for the far right in the polls for the first round is at its highest point: Le Pen and her far-right rival Eric Zemmour, a former talk-show pundit, have more than 30% of support between them. Polls show Macron in first position for the first round on about 26.5%. Le Pen has risen to 23% in recent days. The hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in third on about 17% and also rising. A high number of undecided voters and a potentially high abstention rate means the outcome of Sunday’s first round remains open.

Macron said Mélenchon’s hard-left movement was not in the same category as the far right but brought “simplistic arguments and counter-truths that cultivate fears” in the same way.