As voters head to the polls, let’s take a look at what the two fierce rivals have said about some of the main topics on voters’ minds in the build up to election day:<\/p>\n
Cost of living <\/strong><\/p>\n This is possibly the most pressing issue in this election, and both incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen have focused on the rising cost of food, fuel and other goods.<\/p>\n Le Pen has made it the focus of her campaign, proposing to scrap income tax for all under-30s, reduce VAT on fuel from 20% to 5.5% and abolish it on 100 other essentials.<\/p>\n For Macron’s part, he says the government has spent billions on capping energy bills, which is “twice as effective as dropping VAT” and proposes that employers should be allowed to give staff an untaxed bonus of up to \u20ac6,000.<\/p>\n Pensions<\/strong><\/p>\n Macron wants to pay for much of his programme by raising the pension age from 62 to 65, a policy that has not played well with voters – especially on the left – a voter base he has looked to court since the first round.<\/p>\n Le Pen calls her rival’s plan an “absolutely unbearable injustice” and wants to keep the pension age at 62, although anyone who began working at 20 could retire at 60.<\/p>\n Immigration<\/strong><\/p>\n Le Pen wants a referendum on immigration to put an end to what she calls “anarchic and massive immigration”. She has proposed strict rules for entering France and becoming French, as well as a highly controversial plan for French nationals to be given housing and social services ahead of foreigners.<\/p>\n In response, Macron accuses her of an “authoritarian” drift and failing to respect the constitution, condemning Le Pen’s “nationalist agenda, which is not patriotism”.<\/p>\n More to follow\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As voters head to the polls, let’s take a look at what the two fierce rivals have said about some of the main topics on voters’ minds in the build up to election day: Cost of living This is possibly the most pressing issue in this election, and both incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":20735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[56,12],"tags":[9951,12487,10387,6672,10507,911,524,5494,6496,11844,5575,6351,6084,6569,6032,2264,11715,6094,7998,12380,5803,414,5904,6558,7400,13057,1502,8632,594],"class_list":["post-20734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-world-news","tag-age","tag-agenda","tag-campaign","tag-cost-of-living","tag-court","tag-election","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-energy","tag-food","tag-foreigners","tag-france","tag-french","tag-french-election","tag-fuel","tag-goods","tag-government","tag-housing","tag-immigration","tag-income-tax","tag-injustice","tag-le-pen","tag-macron","tag-marine-le-pen","tag-pension","tag-referendum","tag-scrap","tag-tax","tag-vat","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}