France. Macron and Le Pen battle over pensions as French election race tightens
With France’s presidential race tightening ahead of Sunday’s first round vote, favourites President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen battled over pension reform on Monday.
Opinion polls have long predicted Macron will win a second term but Le Pen has tightened the gap, with polls showing the 44-year old president with only a six-point advantage in a likely run-off on April 24.
Le Pen has benefited from a campaign focused on purchasing power on which she doubled down on Monday.
“Do you realise what retirement at 65 is? It’s simply completely unfair,” she told BFM TV, lambasting Macron’s plan to increase the legal age at which one gets a full pension from 62 to 65.
Le Pen wants to keep the 62-year-old threshold, and bring it down to 60 for those who started working before age 20. Pushing back the retirement age would hurt workers, she said, arguing that many would not manage to find a job at that age and would see their pension hit as a consequence
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