Eric Zemmour criticized Saturday “the assistantship” which according to him promotes immigration, during his second major campaign meeting in Lille, while his far-right rival Marine Le Pen reserved his attacks in Reims against the quasi- candidate Macron. While several hundred anti-racist demonstrators demonstrated in the streets of Lille, with some tension and tear gas fire, the far-right candidate, facing 6,000 white-hot supporters at the Grand Palais in Lille, held a speech focused on purchasing power to “give hope” that “labour France is waiting for” according to him.
Purchasing power, but also the key themes of Zemmour
“Here even more than elsewhere, the assistantship (of social assistance) is an insult”, he lambasted, promising to be “the president who will bring together the entrepreneur and the worker” while “putting an end to the waste of taxpayers’ money. Among several measures that he did not quantify, Eric Zemmour proposes in particular a “zero charge bonus”, paid at the goodwill of the employer, “up to three months of net salary”. A form of extension of the “Prime Macron”, a measure created in 2019 and renewed since. Nearly four million employees received this bonus last year with an average payment of 506 euros.
While Eric Zemmour repeated that he would abolish the license fee to finance public television, a journalist from the private channel TF1/LCI was “spit in the face” by a supporter of the candidate Reconquête!. In the room, his supporters praised the “vision”, “temperament” and “new ideas” of the far-right candidate in the face of “a France in serious danger” in their eyes.
A demonstration of 1,100 people opposed to the arrival of the Reconquest candidate! including 200 from the ultra-left, according to the police, took place a little earlier, fraught with tension. The security forces sporadically fired tear gas against several dozen individuals dressed in black. Six people were arrested and a police officer was injured in the hand, according to the authorities. The demonstrators, like Christian, a 68-year-old pensioner, regretted that “people are deaf or blind” to ideas they consider dangerous.
Another demonstration of 500 people, including the PS mayor of the city Martine Aubry and members of SOS Racisme, had taken place earlier in peace to “say no to hatred”.
“We will win!”
In a remote duel, Marine Le Pen, whom a latest Ipsos Sopra-Steria poll gives tied with her rival Eric Zemmour (14%) behind Valérie Pécresse (16.5%) and Emmanuel Macron (24%), held to mark its differences, in Reims, with Eric Zemmour, indicating to have a “worked, thoughtful, complete project”. But she especially attacked Emmanuel Macron, whom she would face in the second round, responsible according to her for the “regression” of a “polytraumatized”, “abandoned” and “wild” France.
In front of 4,000 activists, blue-white-red flags in hand and repeatedly singing “We’re going to win!”, the RN candidate called for “breaking the cycle of defeatism” in the face of “an impoverishment of the French” who “n is not a fatality” in his eyes. The only slight incident to note, the irruption of two Femen, shirtless and chanting “Le Pen fascist, not feminist”, quickly controlled by security. Marine Le Pen wanted to conclude her speech on a more personal note, a rare exercise for her, evoking her career and confessing “to have sometimes failed”, “to have fallen” and “to have always got up”.
Coming to listen to him, Annick, a 58-year-old business manager, says she appreciates him for “his attachment to our French identity” and an “image of firmness” in the face of a Zemmour “who has no sincerity”. More than a hundred people had demonstrated earlier to cries “Out the far right, Le Pen, Zemmour & Co” or “R-Haine out”. On Twitter, LFI deputy Alexis Corbière castigated “the tap of far-right ideas open without interruption” on “all the news channels”.