A day of decision for French voters

After a bruising campaign for the presidential election, the electorate now has clear choices

illions of French voters head to the polls today to choose the next president of France. While opinion polls suggest that centrist Emmanuel Macron is likely to be elevated to succeed Francois Hollande in the Elysee Palace, voters across Europe and the United States have shown in the past year that they don’t follow the scripts written by pundits and pollsters alike. And with National Front leader Marine Le Pen softening her image in the two days prior to polling, no one can say for sure what will happen until polling closes this Sunday evening.

This has been a bruising campaign for France, a historic election where neither the Republican nor Socialist parties have had a candidate in the final runoff ballot since the founding of the Fifth Republic by Charles de Gaulle in October 1958. In the past six decades the views of the two main parties have held sway in the Elysee Palace and while there are still parliamentary elections to be held in mid-June, either Macron or Le Pen will hold considerable sway.

These past weeks too have been bruising, offering French voters a choice on how their nation moves forward, its values, and its role, both within the Eurozone and its leadership in the European Union. Both Macron and Le Pen have offered policies that differ in outlook and in style.

Macron, an economist, offers a view of a proud France, playing a leading role within the EU, part of the process of renewing the European experiment. With his experience as an economist, Macron forges a view of a Europe of free movement, where national borders do not impede the flow of people or trade. It’s a model that has been refined in the past four decades since the emergence of the European Economic Community. But it’s a traditional model that has been questioned, criticised and has been undermined by those who believe international integration has gone too far, that its open borders are a security risk and that nations once more must forge an independent and sovereign path.

Le Pen’s policies are built on the desires of many French to be fully sovereign, taking control of its borders, limiting those who have access to the benefits of French society, and have had enough of administrations in Brussels who have created a political and economic entity that has simply grown too big. Protectionism is important for Le Pen’s voters — protecting French jobs, French values and French political and economic sovereignty. Now it’s up to the French to decide.