As far as European politics is concerned, the TV debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen could have been similar in all EU states: perception of the need to do things together, against nostalgia for an unprecedented solitary “greatness”. .
I watched so I don’t have to: after almost two hours and 50 minutes, the first and only debate between Emmanuel Macron, the incumbent, and Marine Le Pen, his challenger in the French presidential elections, ended at midnight on Wednesday. It was very detailed from a political point of view, and I found it comforting to see two candidates for the highest office of a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear power fighting over the intricacies of cutting self-employment costs or the prison system – especially after of the shocking senseless “debates” I had to follow during my time as a Washington correspondent on the 2016 US presidential campaign.