Find here the entirety of our live #ELYSEE2022
11:01 p.m.: “I don’t really understand the reasons for this turnaround. That is on the political level. On a personal level, you know very well that emotionally, it touches me. Now it hurts me. I said it, I think I would have a hard time hiding it.”
Marine Le Pen returns to the rallying of Marion Mérachal to Eric Zemmour. “Well, a month ago, she said she would support the best placed between Eric Zemmour and myself. It turns out that I am very much the best placed to win against Emmanuel Macron. ”
10:56 p.m.: “Yes, I will go. Despite what I think of Qatar, with whom we are often complacent. But I don’t want to mix sport and politics like I did earlier.”
Marine Le Pen will attend the opening ceremony in Qatar, if elected president.
11:03 pm: In addition to “putting the teaching of French, mathematics and history back at the heart of the curriculum”, Marine Le Pen makes a lesser-known proposal on the theme of education. The RN candidate promises to “raise teachers’ salaries and rebuild their training”. Another subject at the heart of his campaign: “the abolition of the bureaucracy of the National Education to free up financial resources, reduce class sizes and stop school closures”.
10:54 p.m.: “Children in France come in sixth with a failure rate in terms of writing mastery that is catastrophic. It is true that mathematics is a real disaster as well. So it’s that there’s something wrong. I seriously think that we need to increase the number of hours, even if it means increasing them to 80 or 85% if necessary, because it is absolutely urgent to raise the level to allow young people to do what they want to do afterwards.”
10:54 p.m.: Of which act. But Marine Le Pen forgets the rest. This trend can be explained by two reasons, explains the COR, which will act as obstacles to the ageing of the population: the increase in the retirement age (from 62.2 years in 2019 to just under 64 years around 2040, if the law is not changed), past reforms and the postponement of the age of entry into working life. But also a decrease in average pensions compared to employment income (31%-36%, against 50% currently). Harsher conditions, therefore.
10:50 p.m.:
“The percentage [of the pension system] in relation to GDP is sustainable,” Le Pen said, referring to the Pension Policy Council (COR), and criticising the idea of an imminent threat to pension funding. “The share of pension expenditure in GDP reached a particularly high level in 2020, at 14.7% of national wealth,” says the June 2021 report (PDF format). But the NRC, indeed, adds that pension system spending relative to GDP would decline from 2030 to 2070 in all scenarios.
10:53 p.m.: “Teachers must also be able to have in-service training. They must be able to rise in rank, and in particular become teacher-trainers. (…) So I think you have to trust them. They must be revalued.”
10:47 p.m.: On the theme of education, Marine Le Pen makes several proposals in her program. In particular, she wants to “restore our education system so that it can regain its mission of transmitting knowledge”. The RN candidate proposes in particular to “restore the authority of the educational institution by the establishment of a uniform at primary and middle school while punishing absences and incivilities”.
10:47 p.m.: “Discipline must be restored. We need to restore safety, that is, we need students to be able to go to school without being afraid to go. It also means fighting against school bullying, which is, for the moment at least, a failure.”
11:00 p.m.: “We must focus time above all on knowledge that is fundamental knowledge, that is to say the mastery essentially of written and spoken French, mathematics and history.”
Marine Le Pen is now being asked about education and sport by Mohamed Bouhafsi.
10:44 p.m.: The “referendum on immigration” wanted by Marine Le Pen, which she spoke about earlier, is a proposal relating to “national priority” and the introduction of “quotas”. Problem: these are two themes that can be considered unconstitutional and contrary to international and European law in particular. Our explanations to be found in this article.
10:47 p.m.: Asked about intensive livestock farming, Marine Le Pen did not speak in favor of a ban. On the other hand, it brought back the debate on ritual slaughter. “Slaughter without stunning, I have been calling for years for an end to slaughter without stunning. And there, I can tell you the animal suffering, it is every day thousands of thousands of animals that are slaughtered alive.”
10:42 p.m.: On global warming, few proposals in Marine Le Pen’s program. The candidate of the RN wants to “ensure the energy independence of the country to lower the bill of the French”. For this, it has decided to wage war on wind power, by “returning to households the 5 billion in subsidies paid in particular to wind turbines” and “by stopping wind projects and gradually dismantling existing farms”.
10:42 p.m.: Marine Le Pen does not want to ban hunting: “I don’t like hunting, but since I’m not a dictator, I don’t ban what I don’t like.” On the other hand, it wishes to prohibit bullfighting for minors.
10:42 p.m.: “The problem is the conflicts over the use of state forests. I think that all users, whether hunters or walkers or others, must be able to benefit, enjoy nature. I think it has to be decided mainly locally, that is to say that we can say in the morning, for example, it’s the hunt and in the afternoon, it’s the walk.”
10:41 p.m.: “I believe a lot in new technologies. Look, again, at a European project that could have been carried out, and has not been carried out for twenty years. I call for massive investment in hydrogen research. If we invest massively and control this hydrogen energy, well we will solve part of the problem of fossil fuel consumption in France.”
10:32 p.m.: “I think the first thing to do, and the most urgent thing, is to change the global economic system. We can no longer accept that we go to manufacture 10,000 km further, that is what is killing us. So the solution is localism.”
Marine Le Pen is now questioned by Hugo Clément on the environment and on the latest IPCC report.
10:35 pm: Still on immigration, Marine Le Pen tries to distinguish herself from Eric Zemmour’s program. The RN candidate does not want to talk about a “great replacement” as her far-right competitor does. “Our hobby horse is not the ‘great replacement’. We have proposals in all areas and probably even more social measures than candidates from other political sides,” said Marie Cauchy, elected to the national office of the RN at a recent meeting of the candidate in Vienne (Isère).
10:35 p.m.: “I don’t think there are any facial controls.”
Marine Le Pen rejects the idea of the existence of facial control. “I think the police control the people who are on the street, who are there and who appear to them to be behaving… I believe that there are neighborhoods in which there is an insecurity that is greater than elsewhere.”
10:28 p.m.: The RN candidate finally retracted this proposal on February 17. She now wants a progressive retirement system, reserving retirement at age 60 with 40 annuities for French people who entered working life before the age of 20. For those who start working after the age of 20 and up to 24.5 years, “a progressive system of 160 to 168 quarters of contributions will be put in place”, she added, for a departure between “60.7 and 62 years”.
10:26 p.m.: As for Marine Le Pen, she recently reviewed her position on pensions. Initially, she envisaged retirement at age 60 with 40 annuities for all. A proposal that had been criticized even in his own camp, some fearing a repulsive measure for the right-wing electorate.
10:26 p.m.: The candidate of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for example, proposes a legal retirement age of 60 with 40 years of contribution, regardless of the age of entry into the labor market. For his part, the communist candidate Fabien Roussel wants to introduce retirement at age 60 “for a full career ranging from 18 to 60 years,” reads his program.
10:26 pm: On pensions, Marine Le Pen assures her: “I am the only one to propose a retirement that allows those who have entered the world of work under 20 years of age to leave with 40 annuities, at 60 years old”. It’s not true.
10:33 pm: On immigration, a theme at the heart of the RN candidate’s project, the positions remained essentially the same as in 2017. In particular, it wishes to “abolish the right of the soil and limit access to nationality to naturalization only on criteria of merit and assimilation”. A novelty on the other hand: a referendum on immigration, which would lead to a reform of the Constitution.
10:54 p.m.: “I am hostile to wearing the veil. (…) I consider it an Islamist uniform.”
Marine Le Pen explains why she wants a ban on “all sails”: “I consider this to be an unacceptable act of submission.”
10:32 p.m.: “I consider that sentence adjustments should not take place before two-thirds of the sentence because I believe in the certainty of the sentences, because in the sentence, there is also the signal, the sanction…”
10:32 p.m.: “I want a social protection system that is not collapsed by the weight, the burden of immigration, which in my opinion is massive, anarchic, too important and deregulated in our country.”
10:17 p.m.: “The problem is that we are not creating enough jobs and wealth in the country. The problem is our model. The problem is unfair competition, which is allowed to develop. The problem is the lack of economic patriotism.”
Asked about unfilled jobs, Marine Le Pen believes that this is not the problem. “There are 5 million 600,000 unemployed in our country. 5 million 600,000 on one side, 130,000 empty jobs on the other.”
22:54: “The priority of social housing as the priority of access to employment. A priority, that is to say that with equal skills well it is true that there will be the priority given to French workers, against foreign workers.”
Nathalie Saint-Cricq is now questioning Marine Le Pen on immigration issues.
10:13 p.m.: “I will lower the price of tolls. (…) From the moment it is the French who have paid for the motorways, then they must now benefit from the fruits of this investment.”
Marine Le Pen is asked about her program concerning the nationalization of highways.
10:21 p.m.: “There is no war in Afghanistan.” This statement by Marine Le Pen tonight on France 2 following a question on the reception of Afghan refugees in France, as is the case today with Ukrainian refugees, has largely reacted on social networks. On Twitter, journalist Frédéric Martel denounced “a dishonorable sentence”.
22:09: “The savings are to be made on immigration, they are to be made on fraud, they are to be made on our contribution to the European Union, which has now become far too important compared to what it was.”
22:07: But the country does not currently have any LNG terminal on its territory to receive deliveries. A situation that forces Berlin to use one of the 21 terminals present in the EU, which leads to transport costs, even though the price of gas and energy has soared in recent months. “We need to quickly build our own LNG carriers in Germany, with the necessary connections and infrastructure,” the Economy Ministry concluded. In short, Germany would like to get rid of Russian gas. It still needs to have the means to do so.
10:06 p.m.: “The Germans defend their own interests, and in particular do not want to stop receiving Russian gas,” said Marine Le Pen. But there is a difference between power and will. “We need to free ourselves from Russian energy imports,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said. The government has released 1.5 billion euros to buy liquefied natural gas, whose main exporters are the United States, Qatar and Australia.
22:04: On pensions, Marine Le Pen proposes that retirees can receive a minimum of 1,000 euros in retirement, “regardless of the duration of contribution”, The RN candidate also wants the minimum old-age pension, or solidarity allowance for the elderly (Aspa), to be increased to 1,000 euros. According to her, it is “a choice of society” that the French must make.
10:22 p.m.: “We have constantly told the French ‘you will have to make more and more sacrifices, work ever longer and probably receive ever lower pensions’. I do not want that and I propose today in this campaign, I am the only one to propose a retirement that allows those who have entered the world of work under 20 years to leave with 40 annuities at 60 years.”
22:02: “I believe in the value of work and I think we must help students who have experienced an absolutely terrible period of precariousness in the last two years, with deprivation of liberty and precariousness. (…) Me, what I want is to make a complementary income that will deliver the State (…). So students who work will be at an advantage over those who don’t.”
10:29 p.m.: “I don’t need to block prices. I’m going to get out of the European electricity market.”
Asked about the idea formulated by other candidates to block energy prices, Marine Le Pen puts forward other avenues. “I don’t need to block prices, since I want to lower VAT.”
10:00 p.m.: “What the Patriots defend is economic patriotism. That is, what we stand for, localism. It is the idea of saying that we must be able to give our agricultural products an advantage, especially in school canteens, in collective catering.”
Marine Le Pen is now being questioned by Francis Letellier about her economic program.
9:53 p.m.: Marine Le Pen says today she “agrees” with certain economic sanctions taken by the Western powers against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. “We do not believe in a diplomacy of threats, sanctions or in a diplomacy of blackmail that the European Union, unfortunately, is increasingly applying against the Russian Federation and against its own members,” she said during her meeting with the Kremlin strongman in 2017.
9:52 p.m.: As a reminder, France today depends on 20% of Russian gas. That is less than some of our neighbours. Russian gas imports from Austria, Germany and Italy account for almost half of their consumption.
9:52 p.m.: France has seen “an increase of around 10% since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine,” said Bruno Le Maire. “So we are not in an outbreak multiplied by two, by three or by four,” relativized the Minister of the Economy. The government is considering an extension of the tariff shield scheme “until the end of the year”.
9:52 p.m.: Marine Le Pen mentioned the repercussions of the war in Ukraine on the French economy, and in particular on the price of gas. She estimates that it is “today four times more expensive than it was a few weeks ago and that this situation could still worsen dramatically”. This is false if we believe the figures given by the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, Tuesday on franceinfo.
9:51 p.m.: “I will end by telling you that not only do I not want a European market, but I even want to get out of it. I want to get out of the European electricity market today so that again, the French benefit from their investments, their choices, which were the right ones to be able to have energy (…) the cheapest possible.”
22:02: There were prisoner exchanges in 2019 and 2020, but Marine Le Pen is right to say that these agreements were at a standstill. In fact, the war had been going on on a daily basis for eight years. The innumerable violations of the ceasefire were documented by the OSCE. “Moscow prefers a zone of permanent instability and has little interest in the resolution of the conflict,” researcher Anna Colin Lebedev told franceinfo before the war began.
9:47 p.m.: They contained several provisions, such as a withdrawal of heavy weapons from both sides of the contact area. They provided for the medium-term reintegration of the two separatist territories into Ukraine, in exchange for broad autonomy, free elections and demilitarization. Ukraine considered it impossible to hold elections until the zone was demilitarized, and Russia distributed hundreds of thousands of passports in these territories in order to establish its influence.
10:04 p.m.:
Marine Le Pen evokes the Minsk and Minsk-2 agreements (2014 and 2015) between the separatist territories, Ukraine and Russia, under the aegis of France and Germany. The CANDIDATE OF THE RN believes that these “have been abandoned”, especially by Paris. As a reminder, these agreements put an end to the violent clashes of 2014 between Ukrainian and separatist forces in the eastern part of the Ukrainian Donbass.
9:46 p.m.: “Today we are talking about Mr. Navalny. But honestly, Mr. Navalny is not a very frequentable character, if you know what I mean. So, let’s also stop, once again, giving all the qualities to someone who doesn’t have any. I assure you that in France, he would probably be sentenced before the criminal courts.”
9:50 p.m.: “Your deputies voted against the resolution that condemned Putin when Navalny was arrested. Your MEPs voted against what Europe was saying in favour of sanctions on Belarus. These are things that your MEPs have done in the European Parliament.”
Enrico Letta attacks Marine Le Pen on the votes of RN MEPs in the European Parliament. “I know how the European Parliament works. And I know very well that, once again, there is sometimes in a text not one subject, but several subjects, and it can be difficult to vote.”
9:40 p.m.: In summary, researcher David Teurtrie explained to franceinfo: “Westerners are responding to Russia: ‘You say that we have violated a commitment that is not present in any treaty, but you had signed the Budapest Memorandum, which guarantees the territorial integrity of Ukraine.'”
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