Polls suggest five candidates could qualify for the decisive second voting round of the French presidential election.
They range from the far left to the far right, but a look at their policies suggests that these categories may have outlived their usefulness.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen are supposed to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, yet they make common cause against the European Union and NATO.
The center-right candidate, François Fillon, shares their friendly attitudes toward Russia. But Fillon sides with the left-wing Benoît Hamon and the center-left Emmanuel Macron in arguing for a more political eurozone.
Le Pen’s economic policies have more in common with the left than the mainstream right. Fillon and Macron, on the other hand, share proposals for labor reform — but they have different social views. The Republican is a Catholic and social conservative who agrees with Le Pen that the French must protect their identity. The independent Macron is socially liberal and pro-immigration.
All candidates want cleaner energy, but where Fillon, Macron and Le Pen see nuclear as part of the solution, Hamon and Mélenchon want to phase it out alongside fossil fuels.
Here is an overview of the signature policies of all five candidates. (more…)
Benoît Hamon and Emmanuel Macron don’t have a lot in common. The former wants to raise taxes in France in order to finance a universal basic income. The latter wants to cut taxes and reduce public spending.
Yet the two presidential candidates made common cause on Monday, when they faced three Putin apologists in the first televised debate of the 2017 campaign. (more…)
French presidential candidate François Fillon has gone down the same road as Brexiteers in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump in the United States by disparaging the institutions that stand in his way and appealing directly to “the people”.
Fillon, the center-right Republican candidate for the presidential elections in April and May, has dismissed charges that he paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros over the years for a fictitious job as a “political assassination”.
He alleges that the rule of law “has been systematically violated” in France and that “the notion of innocent until proven guilty has completely disappeared.”
Fillon held a rally in Paris this weekend, where he maintained that “the people”, not the justice system, would decide the outcome of the election. (more…)
François Fillon has gone back on his word and said he will remain a candidate for the French presidency, despite an investigation being opened into accusations that he paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros over the years for a fictitious job.
Fillon, the center-right Republican candidate, had earlier vowed to pull out of the contest if such an investigation was launched.
Now he maintains it is up to the French people.
“Only universal suffrage, and not an investigation, can decide who will be the next president of the republic,” he told reporters in Paris.
Fillon also repeated his allegation that the probe is politically motivated. “It is an assassination,” he said. (more…)
Emmanuel Macron’s chances of winning the French presidency have never looked so good.
Recent surveys have him neck and neck with the conservative candidate, François Fillon. In some, he is even beating Fillon into third place, which would give Macron a spot in the second-round runoff against Marine Le Pen.
What’s changed from a few weeks ago, when Macron was in third place, is that the Socialists have nominated a far-leftist, Benoît Hamon, for the presidency and Fillon has been caught up in an expenses scandal. (more…)
The victory of François Fillon in the French center-right primary on Sunday means that, barring a major surprise, he will fight the second round of May’s presidential election against the far right’s Marine Le Pen.
This, in turn, guarantees that by June, France will have a president who, if not openly pro-Russian, has considerable sympathies for the views of Vladimir Putin. (more…)
François Fillon’s unexpectedly strong showing in the French center-right’s primary last weekend has send shockwaves through the French political establishment.
Fillon’s remaining opponent, Alain Juppé — another former prime minister — has lashed out at what he calls a “brutal” economic program and a “conservative, backward-looking” vision for the country.
Fillon isn’t shying away from the label “Thatcherite”, which was once toxic in France. He wants to cut benefits and public-sector jobs in order to bring government spending down from 57 to under 50 percent of gross domestic product. He is also campaigning on longer working hours, a higher retirement age and €40 billion worth of tax cuts for businesses.
That’s more radical than what Juppé has in mind, but both men want to roll back the French welfare state and eliminate taxes and restrictive labor policies that make the country less competitive than its neighbors.
It’s on social issues where they truly diverge — and the differences between them reflect a divided France. (more…)
There is a good chance François Fillon will prevail in the second round of the French center-right presidential primary next weekend. The former premier got 44 percent support in the first voting round on Sunday.
His closest rival, Alain Juppé, got 28 percent. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, received less than 21 percent support, forcing him out of the race.
It seems unlikely many of Sarkozy’s voters will switch to Juppé. Fillon takes a harder line on immigration and identity issues. Like Sarkozy, he also favors rapprochement with Russia.
Juppé, by contrast, emphasizes the need to heal divisions in French society and has spoken out against the right’s “Russophilia”.
Fillon would by no means be a weak general-election candidate. If he faces off the far right’s Marine Le Pen in the second voting round of the presidential election next year, he would probably win. Few polls give Le Pen more than 40 percent support.
But if a candidate from the center-left made it into the runoff instead, Fillon could not be sure of victory. Juppé’s chances would be higher. (more…)
A major foreign-policy issue that divides the top three contenders for the French right’s presidential nomination is Russia.
BuzzFeed reports how Nicolas Sarkozy has transformed himself from a Vladimir Putin critic into a Vladimir Putin apologist since he lost the presidency in 2012.
The former president has criticized President François Hollande’s handling of relations with Russia. He argues the EU should suspend sanctions against Russia. And most controversially, the former president has endorsed a referendum annexing Crimea to Russia, a view that puts him at odds with most UN states.
François Fillon, Sarkozy’s former prime minister, has struck a conciliatory tone as well.
He told the magazine Valeurs actuelles this week it was “fortunate” Russia had intervened in the Syrian conflict, otherwise the self-proclaimed Islamic State might have reached Damascus by now.
In reality, Russia’s objective in Syria is to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. It has not prioritized fighting the Islamic State, which mostly does battle with Western-backed forces in Iraq and Syria. (more…)
Former French prime minister François Fillon appears to have upended the contest for his party’s presidential nomination only days away from the first voting round.
Alain Juppé, another former prime minister, has been in the lead for months, polling around 35 to 40 percent support.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, has consistently polled in second place with around 30 percent support.
Fillon didn’t get more than 10 percent until the start of this month but has now surged at Juppé’s expense and turned the primary into a three-way dead heat. (more…)
