French hopefuls set off sparks in debate

On television, Le Pen, Macron mix it up over extremism, economic smarts

PARIS — In a heated primetime TV debate, French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron warned of “civil war” if his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, is elected, saying Wednesday that her hard-line plans to fight Islamic radicals would play into their hands. Le Pen painted Macron as subservient to Islamic extremism, saying, “They control you.”

Both candidates sought to land damaging blows, in a clash of styles, politics and personalities that highlighted their opposite visions and plans for France.

Le Pen painted the former banker and economy minister as a servant of big business and finance and declared herself “the candidate of the people, of the France that we love.”

Saying that Islamic extremists must be “eradicated” in the wake of repeated attacks since 2015, Le Pen asserted that Macron wouldn’t be up to the task.

“You won’t do that,” she said.

Macron countered that Le Pen’s anti-terror plans would play into the hands of the extremists and divide France, adding that this is “what the terrorists expect. It’s civil war, it’s division, it’s heinous speech.”

He painted the far-right nationalist as an empty shell, shaky on details and seeking to profit politically from the anger of French voters. He called her “the high priestess of fear.”

“You lie all the time,” he said. “You propose nothing.”

With the rivals sitting opposite each other at a round table, the debate quickly became a shouting match, with no common ground between the pro-European Union centrist candidate and the anti-EU Le Pen.

Le Pen had piles of notes in colored folders on her side of the table and referred to them occasionally. Macron’s side of the table was sparser, with just a few sheets of paper. He at times rested his chin on his hands as she spoke.

They clashed over France’s finances, its future and their respective proposals for tackling its ills. He scoffed at her monetary plans, saying reintroducing a franc for purchases within France but allowing big companies to continue using the shared euro currency that Le Pen wants to abandon made no sense.

She dismissed his economic proposals with sweeping critiques and bristled at his suggestions that she didn’t understand how finance and business works.

“You’re trying to play with me like a professor with a pupil,” she said.

They also clashed over foreign policy, with Le Pen saying Macron would be in the pocket of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“Either way France will be led by a woman; either me or Madame Merkel,” she said derisively.

The first round of voting on April 23 eliminated mainstream parties from the left and right and propelled the 39-year-old Macron, who has no major party backing, and the 48-year-old Le Pen into the winner-takes-all runoff on Sunday.

For both candidates, the TV face-off, organized in close collaboration with their campaign teams and held in a studio in northern Paris, was a first. Le Pen finished third in the last presidential election in 2012, locking her out of the TV debate reserved for the top two vote-getters between rounds one and two.

Macron, a former investment banker and economy minister for outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande, is running his first-ever campaign for elected office, with a year-old grass-roots movement.

In a first, this year’s presidential race also included TV debates before the April 23 first round, but those involved multiple candidates, not just two. Wednesday night’s debate immediately highlighted the gulf between Le Pen’s “French-first” protectionist proposals for a more closed France free from the EU and Macron’s vision of a proudly pro-EU France that keeps its borders open to trade and people.

For Macron, who topped round one with nearly 3 more points than Le Pen, the priority was to prevent Le Pen from making up ground in the race’s final days.