Things are heating up in France as the election campaigns reach their final stretch, in what has been referred to as one of the most unpredictable elections in decades.
Monday night saw frontrunners Macron and Le Pen rally crowds in Paris.
“Do you know what’s going to happen next Sunday?” Macron asked the 20,000 person crowd in Marseillaise. “We are going to win, and it will be the beginning of a new France.”
Distinctly different to his anti-EU rival, Macron hopes to represent an “open, confident, winning France”.
“Everywhere, we feel the temptation of barbarism ready to surge in other guises … No, we will not let them do it,” Macron told supporters on Monday.
Speaking to a smaller crowd at the Le Zénith arena in north-eastern Paris, Le Pen said that choosing between her and Macron was choosing between her “patriotism” and her opponents’ “savage globalisation”.
“The choice on Sunday is simple: It is a choice between a France that is rising again and a France that is sinking,” she said.
The leader of the National Front also told crowds on her plan to crack down on immigration, saying she wanted to stop “a mad, uncontrolled situation”.
“The French want to live in France like Frenchmen, without being imposed with mores and laws that are not theirs . . . France has the right to regain its national sovereignty — that is to say, its freedom to decide for itself… France has a right to its national identity — that is to say to its deepest being. It has the right to perpetuate itself.”
Recent polls suggest that Le Pen and Macron are neck-on-neck.
Left-wing Mélenchon has gained recent popularity among French voters. He told supporters that while he was not planning on pulling France out of the EU, he would demand significant reforms.
“I am not putting it in danger, I’m not the one who made Britain leave, I’m not the one making trouble in all EU countries, I’m not provoking nationalist feeling everywhere … It’s Europe’s way of organising that’s pushing people that way.”
Meanwhile, Fillon is regaining support following corruption allegations.