(Paris) On the last day of campaigning for the European elections in France, President Emmanuel Macron took a final crowd bath on Friday, accused by the opposition of having exploited the commemorations of the Landing, while the far right is credited with a large lead over his camp by the polls.
Before receiving his American counterpart Joe Biden on a state visit on Saturday, the French president met the public in Bayeux, in the west of the country, to conclude three days of celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy.
“We must defend it too,” he said in response to a lady pleading in the audience for a “strong Europe”.
The official campaign will end at 11:59 p.m. local time (5:59 p.m. Eastern time) in France, before the vote which begins at noon on Saturday overseas, then on Sunday in mainland France.
The final surveys confirm the advance of the far right, with 33% for the National Rally according to an OpinionWay poll, far ahead of the presidential camp (15%) and the socialist list (13%).
On Thursday evening, a television interview with Mr Macron attracted 7.6 million viewers. The head of state considered that he was “playing his role” in speaking three days before the election, firstly to call for a vote in the face of the high level of abstention expected, around 50%.
He also justified his intervention by the rise of the far right. “If tomorrow France sends a very large far-right delegation, if other large countries do so, Europe could find itself blocked,” warned the president, calling for “a start” out of “patriotism” and putting warns against “a let-off vote.”
“Every time Emmanuel Macron speaks, he creates voters for the National Rally,” tackled his figurehead, Marine Le Pen, on RTL. The duel between Emmanuel Macron and the far-right RN party exasperates the other candidates.
The former president of the RN, “opposed to sending instructors to Ukrainian soil”, accused the head of state of “exploiting the Ukrainian conflict”. The Insoumis (radical left) put forward the same argument after a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who participated in the D-Day commemorations, at the National Assembly.
To conclude a difficult campaign, the head of the majority list Valérie Hayer was to participate in a republican banquet in Mayenne (west) in the company of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. “The vote of pro-Europeans, the useful vote, the vote for the balance sheet, the vote for the project, it’s us,” she said during her last rally Thursday evening in Nice South).
His socialist competitor, Raphaël Glucksmann, holds his last rally Friday evening in Lille (north), supported by Martine Aubry, figure of the left and mayor of the city.
With the hope of reversing the curves? “Now is the time to realize this dynamic and make it unstoppable,” he said at a press conference in the morning.
He mentioned the result of the polls in the Netherlands, where if voters sent seven deputies from Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV, far right) to the European Parliament on Thursday, the coalition of his social-democrat rival Frans Timmermans is came first with eight seats.
For its part, La France insoumise (radical left), given around 8%, is convinced that its efforts in working-class neighborhoods, where it presented itself as “the list for peace in Gaza”, will pay off.
“You can also be proud of having led the campaign where no one goes, in these forgotten neighborhoods of the Republic,” declared Manon Aubry Thursday evening in Lyon at a rally with Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
As for the ecologist Marie Toussaint, who might not reach the 5% necessary to send deputies to the European Parliament, she obtained the vote of another head of the list, Pierre Larrouturou, worried that there would no longer be of ecologists in Strasbourg.
