French Election Opens Up as Marine Le Pen Surges

THE NEW YORK TIMES: President Emmanuel Macron’s belated entry into the campaign and his focus on Ukraine have left him vulnerable to a strong challenge from the right.

PARIS — At last, Emmanuel Macron stepped forth. The French president entered a vast arena this weekend, plunged into darkness and lit only by spotlights and glow sticks, before a crowd of 30,000 supporters in a domed stadium in the Paris suburbs.

It was a highly choreographed appearance — his first campaign rally for an election now less than a week away — with something of the air of a rock concert. But Mr. Macron had come to sound an alarm.

Do not think “it’s all decided, that it’s all going to go well,” he told the crowd, a belated acknowledgment that a presidential election that had seemed almost certain to return him to power is suddenly wide open.

The diplomatic attempt to end the war in Ukraine has been time-consuming for Mr. Macron, so much so that he has had little time for the French election, only to awaken to the growing danger that France could lurch to the anti-immigrant right, with its Moscow-friendly politics and its skepticism of NATO.

Marine Le Pen, the hard-right leader making her third attempt to gain power, has surged over the past couple of weeks, as her patient focus on cost-of-living issues has resonated with the millions of French people struggling to make ends meet after an increase of more than 35 percent in gas prices over the past year. » | Roger Cohen | Monday, April 4, 2022

The Observer view on the French election and rightwing populism: Emmanuel Macron is expected to win but voter support for Marine Le Pen shows the threat of the far right must be tackled »

Landslide: Where Will Macron's Momentum Lead France? (Parts 1 & 2)

French Legislatives: Does the French Working Class Care about Europe?

Macron Scolds RT, Sputnik for Coverage of French Election

Read the Washington Post article here

What Is At Stake in the French Election?

May. 06, 2017 - 3:42 - James Kirchick provides insight

Emmanuel Macron Confronted by Union Activists in Albi While Le Pen Dodges Eggs in Brittany

Will Marine Le Pen Triumph in the French Elections?

Marine Le Pen and her party, Front national, have tapped into nationwide anxieties over Islam and the European Union. On the eve of the French elections, we consider why French voters have shifted to the right, and what hope the National Front party gives them of a new France.

French Election: What Would Emmanuel Macron's Presidency Mean for Britain? - BBC Newsnight

Centrist Emmanuel Macron will face far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election.To learn more about the presidential candidate, Evan Davis has met up with Benjamin Griveaux, Mr Macron's campaign spokesman.

French Election: In Search of 'la France profonde' - BBC Newsnight

Much of the attention of the French presidential election has been on Paris and other large metropolitan areas, where the issues of terrorism and immigration have been felt most keenly. But it's outside the capital that the election is really decided. Gabriel Gatehouse has gone in search of France's political and geographic heart.

Champs-Elysées Attack: What Impact on Sunday's French Election?

‘Frexit’ Concerns ahead of French Election

Five days before the first round of the French presidential election the candidates are frantically canvassing for votes.

France's Topsy-Turvy Election: Uncertain Outcome as Insurgents Blow Away Old Guard (Parts 1 & 2)

France's Election: 'The Russians Are Doing What They Can to Bring Down Macron'

French Election Contender Macron Is Russian 'Fake News' Target - Party Chief

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron is a 'fake news' target of Russian media and his campaign is facing thousands of cyber attacks, his party chief said Monday. Mia Womersley reports.
Watch the video here

2017 French Presidential Election: Conservative Candidate Fillon Hit by Scandal

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The World in 2017: After Brexit, Now Comes the Hard Part (Parts 1 & 2)

Right Triumph: Hollande's Socialist Party Suffers Drubbing at Local Vote in France

Francois Hollande is expected to launch a major cabinet reshuffle, as preliminary results show his Socialist party suffering a bitter defeat in local elections. The far right meanwhile has made a breakthrough, claiming its biggest victory in history

Nicolas Sarkozy Faces Questioning in Raft of Investigations as Immunity Ends

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Nicolas Sarkozy could face questioning in a raft of party financing and corruption cases when he leaves the Elysée next week and loses his presidential immunity.

The Right-winger, who lost his re-election bid to Socialist François Hollande on Sunday, held his last cabinet meeting on Wednesday – said to be an "emotional" affair in which he urged colleagues not to be "sad or bitter".

Telling aides he intends to retire from front line politics, Mr Sarkozy let them know he was preparing to return to his former life as a lawyer at the Paris firm he still partly owns, after taking a break with his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and their baby daughter.

But the outgoing president could soon be called for questioning – either as a witness or potentially as a suspect – in several corruption cases when he loses presidential immunity a month after leaving office on May 15.

Judges are likely to want to summon him over an investigation into who ordered French intelligence to unlawfully seek to uncover the source of journalists working for Le Monde. France's intelligence chief is currently under investigation over the affair in which Le Monde exposed embarrassing links between Mr Sarkozy's government and Liliane Bettencourt, the l'Oréal billionaire caught up in a tax evasion and illegal party financing inquiry. » | Henry Samuel, Paris | Wednesday, May 09, 2012

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François Hollande Wins French Presidential Election

THE GUARDIAN: Nicolas Sarkozy concedes defeat to Socialist party candidate, who has become first leftwing president in almost 20 years

François Hollande has won power in France, turning the tide on a rightwards and xenophobic lurch in European politics and vowing to transform Europe's handling of the economic crisis by fighting back against German-led austerity measures.

The 57-year-old rural MP and self-styled Mr Normal, a moderate social democrat from the centre of the Socialist party, is France's first left[-]wing president in almost 20 years. Projections from early counts, released by French TV, put his score at 51.9%.

His emphatic victory is a boost to the left in a continent that has gradually swung rightwards since the economic crisis broke four years ago.

Nicolas Sarkozy, defeated after one term in office, became the 11th European leader to lose power since the economic crisis in 2008.

He conceded defeat at a gathering of his party activists at the Mutualité in central Paris, urging them from the stage to stop booing Hollande. "I carry all the responsibility for this defeat," he said.

He had spoken to Hollande to congratulate him. "From the bottom of my heart I want France to succeed with the challenges it faces. It is something much greater than us; France. This evening we must think exclusively of France."

He said that after 35 years in politics and 10 years at the top of government, he would now become a simple "Frenchman among the French".

The defeat of the most unpopular French president ever to run for re-election was not simply the result of the global financial crisis or eurozone debt turmoil. It was also down to the intense public dislike of the man viewed by many as the "president of the rich" who had swept to victory in 2007 with a huge mandate to change France. The majority of French people felt he had failed to deliver on his promises, and he was criticised for his ostentatious display of wealth, favouring the rich and leaving behind over 2.8 million unemployed. Political analysts said anti-Sarkozy sentiment had become a cultural phenomenon in France. » | Angelique Chrisafis in Paris | Sunday, May 06, 2012

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