Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron fought hard, each defending their approach to environmental protection, between localism and all nuclear, on the one hand, and European framework and renewable energies, on the other.
Absent from the campaign, ecology will have been present in extremis in the debate between the two rounds. From the outset, the journalist Léa Salamé cited the subject as being highly anticipated, especially by young people. Marine Le Pen did not address it during her introductory remarks. But Emmanuel Macron did it, assuring that “Our France will be stronger if it knows how to take up the ecological question and become a great ecological power of the 21st century”. And speaking right after of “to make Europe stronger”, thus underlining a major difference in approach between their two programmes, one falling within a European and international framework, the other focusing on a “national ecology”.
“Helping Households”
Decided to put the package and to prove its “ecological moult”, Macron spoke twice about ecology, spontaneously, during the first four minutes of the debate. During the first part of the face-to-face devoted to purchasing power, he said he wanted “to advance” on a “strategy” of “exit from fossil fuels” which was “begun” under his five-year term. For this, he “assume not to subsidize the gas and oil that we do not produce, but rather to spend public money to help households renovate their homes or change vehicles”.
When ecology was put on the table by the moderators of the debate, who recalled the latest IPCC report, Marine Le Pen gave a layer against free trade, which “Consists of going to produce 10,000 kilometers away to consume 10,000 kilometers further away and which kills the planet” and do “a lot of harm to animals” Rather, she praised the “localism”, keyword of his ecological project.
“Punitive Ecology”
Emmanuel Macron, he repeated that his opponent is “climatosceptic”. She replied: “I am absolutely not climatosceptic, but you are climatohypocrite.” She accused Macron of making “punitive ecology” and denounced his “change of foot” on nuclear. She deplored that he began his mandate by closing the Alsatian power station of Fessenheim and praising the nuclear sector, a “decarbonized tool”, forgetting to specify that new EPRs will not produce electricity before 2037. Macron himself said that he “assumes” the closure of Fessenheim and that of thermal power stations. And insisted that the strategy of “all nuclear” of Le Pen would not work, and that it is necessary “do both” nuclear and renewable energies. Nothing new compared to what they announced the last few days, but at least the differences are clear.