Several key issues have dominated the French presidential campaign this year.
The cost of living: The cost of living is one of the main topics for the French electorate this year. Facing the economic fallout from the pandemic, high energy prices and the war in Ukraine, voters are feeling the pressure, despite generous support from the government. Although inflation is a problem, unemployment remains historically low.
While financial pressures may be insufficient to mask the extremism of some candidates in the minds of voters, they may push some to seek unorthodox answers to their problems.
Macron promises to keep moving forward with a globalized, free-market-focused France. Le Pen wants to completely change the status quo with protectionist economic policies.
Le Pen has also pushed for various measures to help people cope with rising prices, such as slashing sales taxes on fuel and eliminating income tax for people under 30. However, Le Pen’s camp has not fully explained how they will pay for this. according to critics. Others say that they may not all be constitutionally sound.
Macron has proposed a series of tax cuts, including on income and real estate. But his call to raise the retirement age to 65 has been met with hostility by the French public on both left and right, and appears to have softened his stance on the proposal during the campaign.
The war in Ukraine: Although the fight is a long way from the bistros and cafes of France, the conflict is certainly on the minds of voters. Barely 90% of French people were worried about the war in the last week of March, according to the Ifop pollster. Given Le Pen’s support for Putin before the war started, this has worked in Macron’s favor so far.
Europe: Macron wants France at the head of a muscular European Union. Le Pen is a famous eurosceptic who, in the 2017 elections, proposed a national referendum asking France if he wanted to leave the bloc and leave the euro. Le Pen says he no longer wants to leave the EU, but experts say many of his proposed policies would put France on a political collision course with Europe.
Islamic scarves: Although Le Pen has softened her language on Islam, “eradicating Islamist ideologies” remains one of her two priorities in her campaign program.
She wants to ban Muslim women from wearing headscarves in public: a member of her campaign team called the outfit a totalitarian symbol similar to the swastika.
Macron, during his campaign, has highlighted the threat of Islamists and Muslim “separatists” in France, and his government has closed several mosques considered radical by the authorities. However, he has no plans to ban headscarves in public.
The climate crisis: The environmental crisis did not figure as an important issue in the electoral campaign. Although the importance of climate protections is gaining ground globally, it is less of a concern in France, which derived 75% of its electricity needs in 2020 from nuclear power, according to the French Environment Ministry. Most of the candidates in the first round backed the type of nuclear development that Macron has already announced, so there is little divergence on this issue.
However, Macron and Le Pen have argued over wind and solar energy. Le Pen argues that both are expensive and inefficient (he also says that wind turbines have left scars on the landscape of the traditional French countryside), so he wants to remove subsidies for both. Macron wants to invest more in both technologies.
Journalist Camille Knight contributed to this post.
Reference-www.cnn.com