Voters in France are going to the polls to elect either Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen as president, with opinion polls suggesting that Macron will repeat his 2017 win over his far-right rival, albeit by a narrower margin.
A second five-year term for Macron, a champion of the EU, would come as a relief for most of France’s European and international partners and investors as they grapple with the economic and humanitarian impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Victory for the Eurosceptic Le Pen, on the other hand, would be a political earthquake akin to the Brexit vote or the election of Donald Trump in the US, given her former ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and her manifesto pledge to pull France out of Nato’s military command structure.