DOMRADIO.DE: A few days before the election, Marine Le Pen is hot on the heels of incumbent Emmanuel Macron. How come all of a sudden?
Three days before the first round of the presidential elections in France, the gap between President Emmanuel Macron and his main challenger Marine Le Pen is narrowing. While the incumbent president fell slightly to 26.5 percent in a poll by Ipsos-Sopra Steria on Thursday, right-wing Le Pen rose to 23 percent. Left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in third place with 16.5 percent.
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Stefan Lunte (Secretariat of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union): Elections are often decided on the home stretch. And it’s the same in France. Two weeks ago, a report from the Senate, the second chamber of the French Parliament, was published showing that President Macron has resorted to consulting firms far more often than his predecessors and with far more money.
This report caused a scandal because the main consulting firm involved is McKinsey. At the same time, it turned out that this consulting firm McKinsey never paid taxes in France. There are also people who work at McKinsey who previously worked in Macron’s campaign. All of this puts a lot of strain on Macron.
DOMRADIO.DE: Marine Le Pen is considered a supporter of both Russia and Putin. Has she positioned herself clearly since the beginning of the war in Ukraine?
Lunte: Yes, like all presidential candidates, she published a clear rejection of the war and, above all, of Putin. But Marine Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National party has only been able to finance her past election campaigns with loans from Russian banks. It’s like a heavy mortgage on her. So there is a close relationship there. Many also suspect that, should she be elected, she will not be entirely free in her actions. There’s a dark shadow on her.
DOMRADIO.DE: A Le Pen victory, possibly also after a run-off election, would probably turn French European policy around 180 degrees. Do the French really want that?
Lunte: No, the French don’t want that. They don’t want to get out of the common market and monetary union. But at the same time they want to keep their standard of living as it is now. That’s understandable. They don’t want to tackle their social security systems.
In my view, President Macron made a fairly courageous decision and said that if he is re-elected he will reform pensions. That is clearly not on Ms. Le Pen’s agenda. She wants to leave her pension at 60.
She is much less active in the field of immigration and migration and the typical right-wing extremist issues, but rather presents herself as a candidate for ordinary people whose purchasing power has been restricted. She constantly makes suggestions on how to keep the cost of living low.
DOMRADIO.DE: The Catholic Church in France has other concerns, such as the abuse scandal. How do France’s Catholics vote?
Lunte: I can only deduce that from my own experience and observation. I would say they continue to vote for the practicing Catholics to a large extent.
So those who continue to go to church and partake of the sacraments vote, to a large extent, for Valérie Pécresse. She is the presidential candidate of the Républicains party, a bourgeois party comparable to the CDU.
Then there is a section of this group that is more likely to vote for Èric Zemmour, another far-right candidate.
A third group will be Macron, who represents La République en Marche! starts, choose. Practicing Catholics tend to vote less for Marine Le Pen.
The interview was conducted by Michelle Olion.
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