PARIS, April 20 (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen will face off on Wednesday in a debate which could be decisive in the tight race to decide who will run the country for the next five years.
For Le Pen, who is behind Macron in opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s vote, it is all about showing that she has the stature to be president and convincing more voters that they should not fear seeing the far-right in power.
“Fear is the only argument that the current president has to try and stay in power at all cost,” Le Pen said in a new campaign clip on Tuesday, accusing Macron of doom-mongering over what a far-right presidency would mean for France.
For Macron, possibly the biggest challenge will be not to sound arrogant, something many voters have criticised in him, while poking at the holes he sees in Le Pen’s policy plans and playing up his five years of experience in power.
“The French now see her as a possible president, unlike in 2017. It’s now up to us to prove she will be a bad president,” a source close to Macron said, adding that he would “counter her project and prove that it is inconsistent and unrealistic.”
The debate, which starts at 1900 GMT, will be the only one between the two candidates.
When Macron and Le Pen first competed against each other for the president’s job, in 2017, the debate was catastrophic for the anti-immigration, eurosceptic candidate.
She mixed up her notes and lost her footing, while the debate allowed a then-largely untested Macron to convince voters he was fit to be president.
Much has changed since.
DUEL
For one, although the line-up is the same, the outcome of the election is more open, with the centrist, pro-European president’s lead in opinion polls much narrower gap than in 2017.
And Macron has now been in power for five years, meaning Le Pen can attack him on his track record.
She can also only do better than in the 2017 debate, which she herself called a failure, while it could be hard for Macron to repeat such a knock-out performance.
But Macron is not without assets for this debate, which will be the only direct confrontation between the two of the whole campaign.
With far-right pundit Eric Zemmour now out of the game, Le Pen lost a rival that made her look less radical, by comparison, and that has hit her in opinion polls.
Then, unemployment is at a 13-year low and the French economy has outperformed other big European countries – even if inflation is biting into that.
And while she has largely managed so far to brush it aside, Le Pen has her past admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin working against her.
For both, trying to win over leftwing voters will be key.
While Le Pen’s camp has been scrambling over the past days to explain her plan to ban the hijab in all public places, for Macron, a proposal to push back retirement age is leaving him exposed.
Both have eased up on campaigning ahead of the debate. But while Le Pen is said to be focusing on preparing for it, sources in Macron’s team are keen to point out the president is still at work and hasn’t taken a whole day off to prepare for the debate.
“Being president is not a part time job,” a campaign aide told Reuters.
Four things to look out for in France’s Macron-Le Pen debate
PARIS, April 20 (Reuters) – Trailing in opinion polls with Sunday’s election runoff fast approaching, France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen will need to score points against centrist President Emmanuel Macron in Wednesday’s presidential debate.
Here are some themes to watch for in the debate, which is due to start at 9 p.m. CET (1900 GMT).
MACRON’S TONE
Macron has struggled throughout his presidency to connect with voters outside his urban, liberal voter base. He is often perceived to be an arrogant and condescending leader out of touch with the hard-knock realities faced by households trying to make ends meet.
The former investment banker’s quick tongue has landed him in trouble in the past. He has berated striking workers for “kicking up a bloody fuss” and described the amount spent on social welfare as a “fistful of dough”.
Expect Le Pen to present herself as the defender of hard-pressed workers and to paint Macron as belonging to a distant ruling elite who will put multi-national businesses before French families.
LE PEN’S TIES TO RUSSIA
Russia and Le Pen’s past admiration for President Vladimir Putin could become a flashpoint.
Before she faced Macron in the 2017 election runoff, Le Pen said she shared the same values as Putin and that a “new world order” would emerge with him, then-U.S. President Donald Trump and her at the helm.
Le Pen has condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine but says Russia should be treated as an ally once the war is over. Her foreign policy would assume an equal distance from Washington and Moscow, Le Pen has said.
Macron, however, will need to tread carefully. He hosted Putin at the Palace of Versailles and at his Riviera residence. In the weeks before the Ukraine war erupted, Macron spoke of Europe’s need to draw up a new security deal with Moscow.
FREXIT IN DISGUISE?
Look out for attempts by Macron to portray Le Pen as a fervent Eurosceptic committed to upending decades of European integration in the post-war era.
Le Pen no longer pushes for “Frexit” or dropping the euro zone’s single currency. Instead, she talks of reforming the European Union from within, in an alliance with the like-minded leaders of countries like Hungary and Poland.
Macron describes the election not just as a battle to shape the future of France, but also of Europe, and has attacked what he calls his rival’s hidden agenda to leave the EU.
Macron allies have zeroed in on Le Pen’s insistence that French law be given primacy over European law and her pledge to re-introduce checks on goods arriving in France from other EU states as evidence her Eurosceptic stance has far from softened.
PENSION REFORM, ECONOMIC CREDENTIALS
Macron launched his re-election bid with a hard-to-stomach warning for many voters: you will have to work longer if I win.
Le Pen has described Macron’s plan to raise the legal retirement age by three years to 65 as “wholly unfair”. Macron has told voters any candidate saying the pension system can be left unreformed is lying to them.
On a walkabout in a northern blue-collar town the day after voting in the first round, Macron told locals Le Pen’s economic promises – which include lowering the retirement age to 60 for some workers and scrapping income tax for under-30s – were a fantasy.
Expect the president to keep at it.
