The challenge between three opposing visions for the future of France at the televised debate ahead of the upcoming elections

Brussels – Ahead of the first round of elections for the National Assembly in France (June 30), representatives of the three major parties challenged each other in a live debate on broadcaster Tf1. Three completely different visions for the future of France explained by Jordan Bardella, candidate for Prime Minister for the Rassemblement National (RN), Gabriel Attal, current Prime Minister and candidate again for the Macronist majority, and Manuel Bompard, member of France Insoumise and designated by the New Popular Front to explain the positions of the leftist coalition to listeners. A nearly two-hour debate organized with questions and answers and frequent bickering between the political leaders. However, the two moderators, Anne-Claire Coudray and Gilles Bouleau were able to enforce speaking times and verify politicians’ statements and also highlight false statements.

A heated but not unfair debate

“I will be the Prime Minister of purchasing power,” Jordan Bardella shot out immediately, pointing out how the French are struggling because of rising energy and fuel prices. To remedy this problem, the Rassemblement National proposes lowering the VAT on these products by from 20 percent to 5.5. A measure that could cost as much as 17 billion euros that Bardella would finance by taxing the extra profits generated by oil and energy companies in recent years and reducing the budget allocated to the EU. It is precisely on the financing of the various reforms that RN would like to implement, such as the pension reform, that the Prime Ministerial candidate has come under attack from other exponents who deem the proposed measures unworkable. Even in previous days, when prodded on the cost of the reforms he would like to implement, Bardella was not always able to give a concrete answer on how he intends to act.

Bardella stutters live and collapses, after failing to answer a question about her program pic.twitter.com/NP8SQ8t9V9

– L’insoumission (@L_insoumission) June 24, 2024

Gabriel Attal tried to bring to the listeners’ attention that he is the current Prime Minister and knows well, better than his opponents, how state management works. Attal vindicated his decisions, even unpopular ones such as pension reform, arguing that they were the correct measures to implement to ensure a prosperous future for France. The Prime Minister then counterattacked by pointing out the diversity and strangeness of the compositions of the two rival camps: on the one hand, the Rassemblement National united with the Republicans, and, on the other, all the left-wing parties united to achieve a majority. Regarding the New Popular Front, Attal reiterated how, “they are so quarrelsome that they are not even capable of designating a Prime Ministerial candidate.” Attal was often attacked by other participants in the debate for his “becoming a professor,” who tries to explain things to others that even he does not understand.

In Jordan Bardella’s France, a 31-year-old worker has to pay taxes but a 29-year-old consultant or trader is exempt.

It’s ungrounded. It’s completely ungrounded. pic.twitter.com/L7OPvCsVaT

– Gabriel Attal (@GabrielAttal) June 25, 2024

Manuel Bompard, unlike Bardella and Attal, is not the Prime Ministerial candidate of his coalition but is representative chosen by the New Popular Front to explain the left’s proposals during the debate. For Bompard, too, reducing electricity and fuel costs is a priority; to achieve this, he proposes a price freeze system modeled on what already exists on the island of Reunion (a French territory off Madagascar). The New Popular Front representative also upped the stake by declaring that: “The French have seen the greatest reduction in purchasing power in the last 40 years,” but Gilles Bouleau immediately challenged this statement, saying that purchasing power has risen 25 percent in the last 24 years, far more than in the rest of the EU. A crucial moment of the debate was the confrontation on immigration between Bardella and Bompard, with the latter pointing out that with the rules that the Rassemblement National wants to implement, Bardella himself (of Italian origin) would not have obtained citizenship.

No one leaves their country for pleasure. The first thing to do is to tackle the causes that force people into exile. I take it upon myself to say that when a person arrives in France, he or she must be welcomed with dignity.

Immigrant workers hold jobs… pic.twitter.com/BNaOHATrF9

– Manuel Bompard (@mbompard) June 25, 2024

Countdown to the first round of the legislative

The alignments that will present themselves to the French in the elections are clear. On the far right is Reconquête, the party of Éric Zemmour, which, after not having closed the deal with Rassemblement National, decided to run alone, though not presenting its candidates in some constituencies to facilitate the election of RN deputies. In addition, Reconquête already said that in the second round, where its candidates did not get the necessary votes to participate, it will support the Rassemblement National. Bardella and RN (of which he is President) inked a historic partnership with the Republican Party of Eric Ciotti, breaking the so-called ‘cordon sanitaire’ that required moderate parties not to collaborate with right-wing extremists, considered heirs of Vichy France. The decision by the President of the Republicans split the party (which expelled him only to be reinstated by a judge), and many members decided to run against the joint candidates of the Rassemblement National and the Republicans. Despite this, François-Xavier Bellamy, one of the leading members of the current against Ciotti, has already declared that he will never support either a Macronian or a New Popular Front candidate on the ballot. Completing the line-up are the candidates of the governing majority resulting from the agreement between various center parties and the New Popular Front, a political creature resulting from the union of all leftist parties.

With the first round of voting on Sunday, June 30, and the second on Sunday, July 7, the elections convened with the shortest notice in the Fifth Republic’s history. President Emmanuel Macron’s bet was to spread the cards after the French gave a broad consensus (over 30 percent) to the far-right’s Rassemblement National. With so little time left, the election campaign has been full of twists and turns on all sides, with betrayals and unions that were difficult to predict. On the eve of June 30, it will be clear if Macron’s was a winning gamble, but decisive for him will be his position at the centre of the line-up for the second round. If the majority candidates make it to the runoff, the President can hope that a right-wing voter having to choose between the center and the left will vote for his candidate, while a New Popular Front voter will cast the ballot for the centrist candidate and not that of the far right.