Three of the leading candidates for France’s parliamentary elections met in a TV debate on Tuesday (June 25). We review the major policy points raised.
Over 5.5 million viewers tuned in to watch prime minister Gabriel Attal, Rassemblement National [RN] president Jordan Bardella and La France Insoumise’s [LFI] Manuel Bompard, representing the Nouveau Front Populaire [NFP] clash on issues ranging from purchasing power to immigration.
Both Mr Bardella and Mr Bompard urged French voters to “turn the page” on Macronism and vote for their parties in the June 30 and July 7 votes.
Key issues
Purchasing power
“We can act on purchasing power,” said Mr Bardella, who sold himself as “the prime minister of purchasing power”. He reiterated the RN’s promise to cut VAT on energy from 20% to 5.5%.
Mr Attal hit back, questioning how much the RN’s tax cuts would cost and how they would be financed.
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“I don’t want to promise the moon,” Mr Attal, 35, said, presenting himself as someone who would hold tightly onto the reins of France’s economy and budget, compared to the big spending promised by his rivals. He promised measures to “earn more and spend less”.
Mr Bompard, 38, called for an increase in wages and for the net minimum wage (SMIC) to be set at €1,600 and told Attal he was “badly placed to give lessons on the economy” given his record so far.
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Taxes
Mr Bardella repeated the RN’s plan to scrap income tax for under-30s, to which Mr Attal asked if Mr Bardella, 28, was going to exempt himself from taxes.
Mr Attal said his “golden rule” would be to not raise taxes and said he would scrap notary fees for first-time buyers on homes up to the value of €250,000.
Mr Bompard called for tax rises for the top 8% of earners, adding that 92% of people would pay “the same or fewer taxes”.
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Pension reform
Both Mr Bardella and Mr Bompard said they would roll back the government’s controversial pension reform, which raised the retirement age to 64.
But RN leader Bardella ended up suggesting someone who started working at 24 would retire at 66. Something many outlets picked up on as contradictory to previous statements.
Dual nationals
PM Attal took aim at the RN’s plan to ban dual nationals from certain “sensitive” government jobs, saying “3.5 million dual-national French people felt insulted and humiliated” by the proposal.
Mr Bardella defended the plan, again questioning the prospect of Franco-Russians working in sensitive roles. Mr Attal hit back, mentioning Tamara Volokhova, a security and defence advisor to the RN’s ID group in the European Parliament who is Franco-Russian. Les Echos says Bardella was “stung and unable to justify himself”.
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Healthcare
On the issue of medical deserts, Mr Attal said more doctors were needed, but also called for some healthcare tasks to be passed to other healthcare professionals to free up the time of doctors.
Mr Bompard called for “all essential public services” to be no more than 30 minutes from a person’s home, while Bardella said doctors should be allowed to continue to work after retirement.
Youth violence
Mr Bardella said the RN would remove benefits for the parents of repeat offenders, while Mr Bompard said the NFP would plough more recourse into community policing.
Environment
Mr Bompard criticised the government for cutting its ecological transition budget, while Mr Attal defended the reduction of greenhouse gases and the plans to provide grants for people to better insulate their homes.
Mr Bardella described plans to end the sale of new cars with combustion engines in 2035 as something from “a Cuban-style society”.
Immigration
Mr Bardella promised to “drastically reduce mass migration” and remove the automatic right to French citizenship for those born in France. “On a planet with eight billion inhabitants and the demographic time bomb of Africa, this is no longer possible,” he said.
Mr Bompard defended immigration, saying “we built France on waves of immigration” and noting Mr Bardella’s own Italian and Algerian immigrant heritage. He said “immigrants do not cost money, but bring in money”, claiming immigration brought €10 billion per year to France over the past decade.
The big missing issue
Foreign affairs were largely absent from the debate. A section on France’s “role in the world” was scheduled, but the trio ran out of time. Le Monde noted there was “not a word” about the war in Ukraine, the EU or the Israel-Hamas conflict.
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What has the reaction been?
France
Le Monde said the debate seemed like an “argument between accountants” with its focus on finance, and “missed the stakes of a major election”.
News magazine Le Nouvel Obs said the “big surprise” of the night was the performance of Manuel Bompard, who was “smiling, calm and… in complete control”. It said the main loser of the night was Jordan Bardella, who found himself “on the ropes” – especially over the issues of retirement and dual nationals. Attal was “incisive and impactful”, if at times, unable to justify certain policies, the magazine said.
Many opposition politicians mocked Mr Bardella’s comment about retiring at 66. “Yesterday, the RN promised to repeal the retirement reform at 64. Today, he defends retirement at 66. Bardella’s programme is the national turnaround,” tweeted Socialist MP Boris Vallaud.
“Retirement at 60 on TikTok and 66 IRL (in real life),” tweeted former president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, taking aim at Bardella’s popularity with some young people and large social media following.
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International press
CNN said the debate was “sometimes chaotic” and noted most punches “failed to land”, while France 24 said it was an “ill-tempered” and “sometimes bruising” encounter.
The FT called the debate “fiery” and noted the candidates ran out of time to discuss international issues.
Who won the debate?
On Wednesday morning BFMTV concluded there was “no big winner” between the trio, with no one candidate surging ahead of the pack.
“None of the three were entirely bad, but none were entirely reassuring either,” Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, an expert on political communication, told La Depeche. “We come away from the debate being more worried about the situation in the country than anything else.”
RTL said Mr Bompard came out top on immigration, where he managed to “avoid falling too far into caricature” and reminded viewers that in France, one in 10 workers is an immigrant.
