Announced as much as feared, the revenge of the duel between Emmanuel Macron (LREM) and Marine Le Pen (RN) will take place, five years after the first round. The outgoing president emerged in first position in the first round, Sunday, April 10, at 8 p.m. A relief, relays in particular the daily The Telegraph, in the United Kingdom, which considers its result “comfortable”. With 27.6% of the votes obtained, its strategy of a late entry into the competition is confirmed, according to the newspaper.
“Macron has chosen to show the French people, albeit in a somewhat ‘imperial’ way, that there are more important things than shaking hands in all the villages and caring about the health of the local cows. And that does not did him no harm: the French are not so immature after all”, even dares the Greek newspaper Your Nearelayed by International mail. This lack of a real campaign is nevertheless the subject of much more nuanced analyzes in France.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the New York Times believes that the outgoing president begins his second round in the shoes of a “slight favorite” despite a “dull” campaign. And also underlines a slight final jump giving him a more comfortable mattress than imagined in the face of the excellent dynamics of his rival Marine Le Pen, who collected 23.4% of the votes cast. Despite everything, the latter aroused concern among the foreign press. “Le Pen’s strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. French frustration”, continues the New York Times. What definitively sink the major traditional parties, the PS in the lead, is saddened El Paísin Spain.
The “fight of his life”
Finally, it is Marine Le Pen who receives the most attention this Monday morning. “His success in reaching the second round against Macron on Sunday lies not only in his long-standing desire to clean up his party’s image. The fact that Le Pen is now closer to power than ever is in part the result of her own overhaul of political strategy (…) Unlike her previous two populist presidential campaigns – in which she furiously sought to exploit people’s anger – this time she decided that voters were exhausted from years of protests and wanted calm. She positioned Macron as the one who divides, and herself as someone who could unite”, underlines The Guardian.
April 11 Guardian
The Express
Marine Le Pen is no less dangerous in the eyes of our foreign colleagues. “A victory for Le Pen would have repercussions far beyond France. It would deal a blow to liberal democracy in the Western world and plunge the 27 EU member states into turmoil, just when the states United and their allies are engaged in a struggle for Ukraine with the nationalist and authoritarian Russia of President Vladimir Putin,” says The Financial Times. The British daily believes that this is thus, for Emmanuel Macron, the “fight of his life”.
Especially since the National Rally is in a condition to win. “It’s no longer the same duel at all”, recalls The evening, in Belgium. The first polls certainly give a victory for the outgoing president over his rival, but with a score located according to the institutes between 51 and 54% of the vote. Well below, therefore, the second round in May 2017 which saw Emmanuel Macron win by 66.1% of the vote against 33.9%.
“Macron must now fight”, abounds in Germany the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. For this, he will have to convince among the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the third man in this presidential election, with 21.95% of the vote. But “Macron has given nothing to Mélenchon in recent years. On several occasions, he had his ministers denounce Islamo-leftism and even carry out an investigation in the universities”, notes the newspaper. In the Netherlands, and despite the insistence of the Insoumis camp for which “no voice should go towards Marine Le Pen”, the NRC Handelsblad seems doubtful: “In the second round, part of the voters of Mélenchon will vote for the head of the RN”.