Less than three weeks before the first round of the French presidential elections, the second televised debate between the candidates took place (the last is scheduled for Thursday 20 April, three days before the vote): for the first time in the history of the French Republic yes. I am compare all the candidates for the Elysée, i.e. 11 political personalities and they are not the five major ones, namely Marine Le Pen (Front National), Emmanuel Macron (En Marche!), François Fillon (Republicans), Benoit Hamon (Socialist Party) and Jean Luc Mélenchon (La France insoumise).
The debate was divided into three parts: "how to create jobs", lasting 1 hour, "how to protect the French", lasting 1 hour and a half, and "how to put a social model into practice", lasting half an hour. According to the listeners of CNews and BFM-TV, the two networks that hosted the unprecedented format, the most convincing were the left-wing radical Melenchon, who by now according to all the polls will surpass the official candidate of the socialist party, Hamon, but above all the rising star Macron, former Minister of the Economy with Hollande and now increasingly close to Le Pen in the polls.
In fact, it is increasingly evident that the centrist proposal of the independent candidate, who in a recent interview also tried to distance himself from the government of which he belonged ("I am an anti-Hollande candidate", said Macron), is making inroads into the preferences of the French, above all among those millions of citizens who reject the extremist proposals of Le Pen on one side and Melenchon on the other. Macron, on the other hand, has a very simple program that will change as few things as possible: major cuts in public spending (with the elimination of 120 public jobs) and the removal of the property tax for 80% of those who pay it; however, pensions, the retirement age and the minimum wage will remain as they are, just as the TVA (our VAT) will remain unchanged. However, Macron wants to extend the unemployment benefit (but under certain conditions) and reduce corporate taxes, and he is also the only candidate to want to keep the debated Loi Travail, the French-style Jobs Act.
