French centrist Emmanuel Macron is on course to come out on top of the first round of France's presidential election next month and go on to win in the May 7 runoff against far right leader Marine Le Pen, an Elabe poll showed on Wednesday.

Macron, a popular independent who served as economy minister under President Francois Hollande, would win 25.5 percent of the vote in the April 23 first round while Le Pen would get 24 percent, according to the poll for BFM TV.

Both of their scores were down 0.5 percentage points from the last time the poll was conducted a week ago, Elabe said.

The poll also showed that conservative Francois Fillon's score rose to 18 percent from 17 percent in what was the first increase since he was engulfed by a scandal over payments to family members for work they may not have done.

That would still not be enough to get him into the May runoff, which Macron was seen winning with 63 percent of the vote to Le Pen's 37 percent.

The poll, which was conducted on March 28-29, also showed far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon making further gains, with his first round score reaching 15 percent, up from 13.5 percent a week earlier.

His gains came at the expense of Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon whose share of the vote slipped to only 10 percent from 11.5 percent.

Hamon, a hardline Socialist who wants to legalize cannabis and create a basic monthly state income for all, has struggled to win support from center-left Socialists like former prime minister Manuel Valls who said on Wednesday he would vote for Macron.</s>(PARIS) — Extremism concerns shook France's presidential campaign Tuesday as authorities announced arrests in what they said was a thwarted attack and candidates urged tougher counterterrorism efforts for a country already under a state of emergency.

While national security previously has been a strong theme in the campaign, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen hardened her tone on foreign extremists and border controls in the wake of the arrests that came days before the first round of voting.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron called for national unity and stronger intelligence. Le Pen and Macron are among four leading candidates seen as most likely to progress from Sunday's first round and to reach the May 7 runoff between the top two.

As the government prepared to flood streets with more than 50,000 police and soldiers to safeguard the ballot, Interior Minister Matthias Fekl said police thwarted an imminent "terror attack," arresting two French men in the southern port city of Marseille.

Both are suspected Islamic radicals, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins. Police seized guns and explosives from the apartment the men were leaving when they were arrested, Molins said. The explosives found are of a type used in previous attacks in France and Belgium that were inspired by the Islamic State group.

It was unclear whether a campaign event was a potential target for the attack; Molins said investigators have not determined "the day, the targets and the exact circumstances" of the suspects' plans.

Macron's campaign team said authorities earlier provided a photo of the suspects to his security detail.

The presidential election is being watched as a bellwether for global populist sentiment, in large part because of Le Pen's nationalist, anti-immigration positions.

In a written statement Tuesday, Le Pen pointed to "a devastating multiplication of attacks and threats of attacks" in France which she said was the result of "Islamic fundamentalism" that "has expanded exponentially" in the last decade in the country.

"It's time to put back France in order," she said, using one of her campaign's mantras.

Before Tuesday's arrests were announced, Le Pen said on RTL radio that she would expel foreign extremists and draft army reservists to close France's borders as soon as she takes office.

"We cannot fight the terrorism that weighs on our country without controlling our borders," she said.

He called the arrests a reminder that "the terrorist threat remains very high," especially during the election campaign, and reiterated calls for pressure on internet companies to better monitor extremism online.

But he added that "terrorism ... is a challenge that calls upon us more than anything else to come together, because the terrorists wish nothing more than our division."

Macron and conservative candidate Francois Fillon have pledged more robust counterterrorism efforts, but remain committed to Europe's open borders.

"Democracy must not get on its knees in front of the threats and intimidations from terrorists," Fillon said in a written statement. "The campaign must continue until the end."

Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon suggested his three main rivals — Fillon, Le Pen and Macron — could have been potential targets of the two suspects in Marseille. He expressed solidarity with his fellow presidential hopefuls.

"We will never make the gift to criminals to divide in front of them. We are not afraid," Melenchon said during a rally in Dijon.

Melenchon, who leads a far-left alliance that includes the Communist Party, has risen in polls in recent weeks and is now considered as having a chance of reaching the runoff election.

France's fight against homegrown and overseas Islamic extremism has, with jobs and the economy, been one of the main issues for the stumping presidential candidates.

Those on the right have been particularly vocal, seeking to appeal to voters traumatized by IS-inspired attacks that have killed at least 235 people in France since January 2015, by far the largest casualty rate of any Western country.

With the terror threat "higher than ever," Fekl said "everything is being done" to secure the election, the candidates, their election headquarters and rallies.

He said more than 50,000 police, gendarmes and soldiers will be deployed in France and its overseas territories on Sunday and during the decisive May 7 second round.</s>We will soon find out whether the wave of populism that swept the world in 2016, resulting in Brexit and President Donald Trump, will reach the shores of France. From April through September, France will elect a new president, a new National Assembly and half its senators. Perhaps the most significant pro-populist outcome would be victories for the anti-European Union, anti-euro and anti-immigration National Front party and Marine Le Pen - although it looks increasingly less likely that they will ultimately prevail. However, with voter uncertainty in France at record levels - approximately 60 per cent of voters are undecided - it is difficult to make any predictions.

Europe, which is in the throes of a "super cycle" election year, will be paying close attention. Following the recent election in the Netherlands, Germany will vote in September and Italy could hold snap elections at any time, although a formal election is not due until next year. Any number of these outcomes could influence whether the EU moves toward closer integration or takes the opposite path.

So far, the pro-EU forces seem to be winning. The capital markets should welcome this as a way to reduce Brexit-related uncertainty after the UK recently began the formal process of leaving the EU. Germany's economy is doing well, and Paris and Berlin could form stronger ties if pro-EU candidates win in both countries, which would help the EU and euro area.

First, however, France needs to vote. Here is our overview of the races, our perspective on the candidates' policies and prospects, and the overall implications for investors.

Between April and June, voters in France will elect a president and National Assembly, and in September an electoral panel will choose the Senate. Ultimately, while the French president holds a powerful position, he or she will need to work closely with colleagues in the National Assembly and Senate to enact any significant policy changes - and there are very few scenarios where we expect to see this kind of close cooperation.

France is used to the cohabitation system of government, wherein most members of parliament have different political affiliations than the president, but the more left-wing presidential candidates may have an easier time securing a cooperative parliament. It is also possible that no clear majority will emerge in the National Assembly and additional elections will be needed; a similar scenario happened in Spain last year.

Policies and prospects of four presidential candidates

There are four leading candidates in France's presidential race:
• Emmanuel Macron may have the best chance of becoming president. He is solidly pro-EU but a political outsider. Even if he struggles to gain a majority in the National Assembly, he may have enough support to pass some reforms, although he may find his more aggressive campaign positions neutralized.
• Marine Le Pen should emerge from the first round but may have a hard time winning the second. If she were to become president, the National Front party may struggle to win enough National Assembly seats to give her any chance of driving through significant policy changes.
• François Fillon is a right-leaning candidate of the establishment, but his chances of surviving even the first round have been diminishing due to a scandal involving his wife’s alleged abuse of public funds.
• Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a far-left politician who has been compared to ex-US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. At the time of this writing, he has been gaining ground in the polls, although he remains in third place behind Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen.

Voter turnout will be very important overall, and we expect more French citizens to vote in the presidential race than in the National Assembly elections. Voter enthusiasm tends to wane as the electoral process continues, which gives an edge to parties with more committed voters.

France’s presidential race remains close enough that we would be uncomfortable trying to pick the ultimate winner – particularly given the upsets seen in last year’s Brexit vote and President Trump’s victory in the US. However, we do expect Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen to prevail in the first round.

Once the first round’s results are known on 24 April, we will see how Europe and the markets respond to the prospect of Ms. Le Pen as president. Her policies are hostile to the EU and could keep Europe directionless, beset by populism across the continent, confused by the complexities of Brexit and uncertain of the attitude of President Trump – all of which could further undermine NATO.

A victory by Mr. Macron in the first round, however, may provide a boost to the EU and could lift the markets. Until then, investors regionally and globally still seem wary of EU politics and euro-area risk assets, even though earnings and dividend yields are attractive and the euro seems undervalued.</s>PARIS (REUTERS) - Centrist Emmanuel Macron is a frontrunner in France's presidential election and is favourite to win the unpredictable race.

His closest rival is far-right leader Marine Le Pen and both have scored as high as 25 per cent in voter surveys.

Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker, have promised voters incentives such as local housing tax exemptions worth 10 billion euros (S$15 billion), reimbursement of the full cost of cultural shows, dentures and hearing aids, and cuts in social welfare levies for low income earners, coupled with tax breaks for their employers.

His flagship proposals involve the politically sensitive merger of public- and private-sector retirement pension systems, as well as a merger of unemployment benefit systems, which currently differ for regular wage-earners and the self-employed.

Here are his other key policy proposals:

- Keep France's budget deficit below the EU-mandated 3 per cent of GDP

- Lower jobless rate to 7 per cent by the end of his potential five-year term from around 10 per cent now

- Achieve public spending savings reaching 60 billion annually by the end of the mandate.

- Cut corporate tax from 33 per cent to 25 per cent

- Convert the tax credit system for firms into permanent payroll tax breaks for low-wage workers

- Maintain the 35-hour legal work week, but leave negotiation of real work hours to company level

- Exempt low-wage earners from certain social welfare levies, a measure that would put an extra month's wage per year in the employee's pocket.

- 50 billion euros of public investment over five years, of which 15 billion for training/changing skill-sets to find jobs.

- 15 billion on energy/environment targets: exit within 5 years from coal-based energy production, shift towards alternative, renewable energy sources, rise in carbon tax.

- 5 billion in farm sector financing for environment-friendly projects, local production cooperatives and aid during price crises.

- 5 billion for transport and local infrastructure, with a focus on renovating old train lines rather than building new ones.

- 5 billion euros on health sector, including better reimbursement of glasses, dentures and hearing aids, plus move away from wasteful medicine packages that contain more pills than a patient needs.

- Build 15,000 extra prison places, hire 10,000 police, raise defence budget to 2 per cent of GDP, from just under 1.8 per cent in 2016

- Introduce on-the-spot fines for drug use and issue orders banning gang leaders from certain neighbourhoods.

- Halve number of early primary school pupils to 12 per class in 12,000 low-income zones, with teachers given a bonus of 3,000 euros a year to work in such areas.

- All 18-year-olds to get a 500 euro "culture pass" to spend on cinema, theatre and concert tickets.

- Mobile phone use to be banned on school premises for pupils aged up to about 15 years.

- Strict application of secular policy in public life. No ban on Muslim veil for university students, as envisaged by some candidates.

- State subsidy of 15,000 euros over 3 years for firms that hire people in 200 low-income neighbourhoods.

- Reduce number of lawmakers by a third in both the Senate and National Assembly

- Reduce by at least a quarter the number of provincial local authorities

- Ban hiring of family-members as assistants of lawmakers

- Elected mandates limited to maximum three of same kind</s>This weekend, voters in France head to the polls in the first round of the presidential election.

One of the leading contenders is political newcomer Emmanuel Macron.

His supporters are using an American tactic, unfamiliar to French voters. The French rarely knock on their neighbors' doors. So, asking a stranger to talk politics during election season is something new.

Christelle Dernon, 25, has decided to step out of her comfort zone for Macron, her presidential pick.

"It's not normal," she says." People are quite surprised that we just knock on their doors to talk about politics. They're not used to that."

Dernon makes her way into a social housing complex in the 18th district of Paris, a working-class neighborhood. People there used to vote socialist, but this year many say they are undecided — which makes them a prime target for Macron's volunteers.

She knocks on a door. The woman who answers says her husband is a taxi driver who has lost 30 percent of his business to Uber. Macron supports the ride share service, but the woman is open to persuasion. Dernon explains the candidate's policy to create more jobs and leaves a brochure.

Dernon says it's the undecided voters that excite her the most.

"Because the guy was unsure about his vote ... just for having us and discussing with us, he was convinced in the end," she says. "In the end, he will help us relay the program to his friends and family."

By the end of the day, Dernon and other volunteers in the 18th arrondissement knocked on more than 1,900 doors and spoke to nearly 600 people.

Knocking on doors is a tactic that was used by another politician who, like Macron, was an inexperienced newcomer when he first appeared on the scene. His name was Barack Obama.

"What we've seen in all the political studies, going door-to-door, having an exchange face-to-face, it raises the chance of persuading someone to vote by eight-to-ten times," Dernon says.

Lex Paulson is an American who worked on Obama's 2008 campaign. He now teaches political science in Paris and is an unpaid adviser to Macron.

Paulson says he's hearing the same frustrations from French voters that he heard when he worked for Obama.

"I feel the stakes are exactly the same here, and even more urgent now that America has gone the direction it has gone," Paulson says. "I think this is the most important campaign in the world right now."

If Macron does make it to the second round, he's likely to meet the extreme right candidate Marine Le Pen in the runoff. He's hoping the new tactic of talking to voters on their doorsteps will help him win enough national support to defeat Le Pen and become the next president of France.</s>Speaking at a rally in Paris, the Front National leader blasted the “irresponsible Schengen Treaty” and promised to restore France’s “Four Sovereignties”. Ms Le Pen told supporters: "I would decide on a moratorium on all legal immigration to stop this frenzy, this uncontrolled situation that is dragging us down.”

She said this would be followed by the introduction of "much more drastic, more reasonable, more humane, more manageable rules" on immigration. She added: “The European Union is imposing double trouble on us: the lack of physical borders with the irresponsible Schengen Treaty.

“We got rid of our physical borders and that turned our countries into train stations for all immigrants around the world. I will end Schengen and restore our national borders. “No other candidate is proposing this, none of them.” With less than a week to go before the first round of voting, Ms Le Pen and her main rival Emmanuel Macron are neck-and-neck in the polls, with Francois Fillon and far-left maverick Jean-Luc Melenchon only a few points behind.

Despite her rally being marred by anti-fascist protesters, Ms Le Pen told her supporters: "The choice on Sunday is simple: It is a choice between a France that is rising again and a France that is sinking.” She added: "Give us France back, for God's sake,” which sparked the 5,000 supporters who had filled the Zenith concert hall in the French capital to chant: “This is our home”.

Ms Le Pen also played on her familiar topics of the party being anti-European Union and anti-immigration. She said: "I will protect you. My first measure as president will be to reinstate France's borders. “Mass immigration is not an opportunity for France, it's a tragedy for France.”</s>Before dawn broke over Paris, Emmanuel Macron was inspecting meat carcasses on hooks at a wholesale market. Rising early to talk about the “value of hard work” while watching butchers skinning calves’ heads is a classic campaign stop in any French presidential election. But this stop seemed more urgent than usual.



The independent centrist, who is running in his first election, had been seen as a frontrunner but faces a gruelling final few days before the first-round presidential vote this Sunday.

Styling himself as a pro-Europe progressive, he went from dark-horse outsider to favourite three months ago. But as polls narrow and a third of the electorate remains undecided, the race has become increasingly uncertain.

Macron’s supporters concede that the last few days of campaigning will be tough and unpredictable. Although polls have shown he could win a second round runoff on 7 May, Macron first has to make it to the final round – and that is not by any means guaranteed.

“The new president,” said one butcher as he posed for a selfie with Macron at the market. “He hasn’t won yet!” came the cry from the scrum of media recording the moment.

“You have to vote first,” Macron reminded him gently.

Macron, who served as the Socialist François Hollande’s economy minister before promising to “revolutionise” French politics by running for president, has been falling in the polls in recent weeks. The same is true for the other frontrunner, the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen, who had been roughly level with Macron at the front of the pack.

It is normal for presidential frontrunners to dip in the polls in the final weeks of a French election campaign, but Macron and Le Pen’s slump has been accompanied by a concerted rise by the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the scandal-hit rightwing candidate François Fillon. The latter appears able to claw back voters who had turned their backs after allegations that he gave taxpayer-funded fake jobs to his wife and children.

Four candidates sit within the polls’ margin of error and the abstention rate could be higher than usual. There is no certainty about which two candidates will make it to the final round.

Last week, when Macron was photographed with his wife smiling down from a chairlift at a mountain resort in the south-west, it risked sending a message of haughty aloofness. He has decided to spend the remaining campaign days mixing in crowds, albeit carefully chosen, like the market workers who approve his promise to cut red tape and charges for employers.

Macron’s vast Paris stadium rally on Monday, which attracted 20,000 people, was intended in part as a rallying call to the thousands of volunteers for his En Marche! (On the Move) movement, who will be holding scores of small local campaign meetings this week.

In a dig at Le Pen, Macron said voters had the choice of “hope and courage over resignation”. Polls show Macron mostly attracts people who feel optimistic about their future, despite the overwhelming sense of pessimism and anger in a country troubled by decades of mass unemployment and the ever-present threat of a terrorist attack.

But even at the euphoric rally in the capital, campaigners were aware of the daunting task. Dominique Dusart, 57, who heads En Marche! in Yonne, south of Paris, admitted some were worried his support could decline. “We’re a bit worried by Mélenchon’s breakthrough,” she told the Agence France-Presse news agency. “It has been a bit of a slap in the face because we weren’t expecting it.”

Macron’s electorate has always had a higher proportion of wavering voters than other leading candidates. His challenge this week is to highlight the novelties in his policy platform, and perhaps come up with new headline-grabbing measures.

In an election campaign that has focused more on candidates’ personalities than any single topic, Macron’s “neither left nor right” manifesto has not seen any single measure boldly standing out. Canvassers pointed to his promise to cut local housing tax for 80% of people, or his plans to overhaul the system of unemployment benefits, or his loosening of rules and charges for businesses.

At a trestle table of Macron manifestos and a stand of balloons at a market in central Paris this weekend, an En Marche! campaigner tried to convince voters. Some asked about the dip in the polls. “Not long ago, everyone said it was impossible for Emmanuel Macron to get this far but we proved them wrong, and now we’re so close to the finish,” the canvasser urged one voter in his 40s who was undecided between voting Macron or returning to his “natural party” and choosing Fillon on the right. “I’m still not sure what Emmanuel Macron really stands for,” the voter said.

“We’ve gone in a few days from ‘we can win’ to ‘we can lose’,” one MP in Macron’s circle was quoted telling Le Monde last week. “There’s a lot of tension. Macron displays a calm image of serenity, but I’m not sure that’s the case – he’s knotted up inside.”

Macron is not alone in facing an uncertain first round vote on this Sunday. “After the highs of a fortnight ago, you can sense Emmanuel Macron’s campaign is fragile, but perhaps not at the point where it’s going to shatter,” said Philippe Braud, an analyst at the Cevipof institute at the Sciences Po university in Paris.

Marie Imbert, a 27-year-old fan wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Macron President”, told Agence France-Presse at the Paris rally on Monday that the narrowing polls were a warning against complacency in one of the most unpredictable elections in decades.

“It’s having a mobilising effect. It means we’ll have to be on the ground working until midnight on Friday night,” she said.</s>Terrorism abroad. Immigrants massacring French citizens at home. Increased anxiety about France’s role in the world. Establishment parties that seem indifferent and corrupt. And a far-right candidate who promises to fix all of it.

It may sound like I’m describing the 2017 French election, but I’m actually talking about 2002.

In the current race, polls are tight, with the far-right populist National Front candidate Marine Le Pen, who has capitalized on concerns about terrorism and immigration, jockeying for first place with former Socialist cabinet minister Emmanuel Macron, while the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon pulls even with the center-right Republican François Fillon, who has been disgraced by scandal.

France’s presidential elections involve two rounds of voting, with the top two finishers from the first round facing off in a runoff contest a few weeks later. Since none of the candidates is currently polling anywhere near 50 percent of the vote, Macron and Le Pen are both hovering between 22 and 24 percent, a runoff is all but guaranteed.

Polls currently suggest a Le Pen versus Macron matchup in the runoff, but a strong last-minute surge by Mélenchon between now and Sunday could put him in the running instead.

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In those days, the National Front was widely viewed as a xenophobic fringe party and was headed by its current candidate’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was charged with Holocaust denial numerous times over the course of his political career.

In 2002, however, Le Pen was facing a perfect storm. People were afraid after the 9/11 attacks remade the world overnight and an immigrant massacred eight people in the town of Nanterre, and the leftist vote was split among a number of parties. When the ballots were counted, Le Pen had won second place, narrowly defeating Socialist candidate and incumbent Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

His success, however, was short-lived.

Incumbent Republican President Jacques Chirac declared that Le Pen’s advancement to the second round threatened “the very idea that we have of mankind, his rights and his dignity.” The moderate right and the entire left instantly fell in line behind him. Chirac stopped campaigning, refused to debate Le Pen, and won the runoff with 82 percent of the vote.

So if Marine Le Pen makes it to the second round, what’s to stop the same thing from happening again?

First, today’s National Front is not the National Front of 2002. Since taking over from her father, Marine Le Pen has worked hard to shed the party’s xenophobic image, and even expelled the elder Le Pen from the party.

Second, the French people don’t have an incumbent to fall back on this time, as current president François Hollande isn’t even running. Neither candidate from the major parties, the Republicans and the Socialists, has a chance of reaching the runoff. This means that the only options available are three untested parties that have never held power before. Without a comfortably familiar alternative to the radical National Front, votes might not coalesce as neatly around Le Pen’s runoff opponent as they did in 2002.

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Third, almost 40 percent of French voters remain undecided, and pollsters say that up to 35 percent may stay home on election day, up from an average of around 20 percent. As one French news site put voters’ feelings, “Le Pen is too extreme… Macron is too young… Fillon cannot be trusted… [flailing socialist candidate] Hamon is the establishment, and… Mélenchon [is] too risky.”

Fourth, while nearly every voter on the French political spectrum in 2002, aside from actual FN members, was closer to Chirac than to Jean-Marie Le Pen, this may not be the case with the alternative to Marine. If the communist-sympathizing Mélenchon makes it to the runoff, it’s likely much of the moderate left will stay home.

Against Macron, Le Pen’s chances of victory are far slimmer. One poll earlier this month suggested that she would lose 61 percent to 39 percent in such a matchup. But the left might not turn out to vote for Macron either, and even 39 percent would be a marked step up from Le Pen’s father’s performance in 2002.

It is likely that Emmanuel Macron will be the next president of France, but if Trump and Brexit have taught us anything, it’s that nothing is ever certain. The stakes here are very high — a victory for the Euroskeptic Le Pen would likely be the final nail in the coffin of the European Union.</s>Far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Sunday sought to mobilize her supporters six days ahead of France’s most unpredictable presidential election in decades by pledging to suspend all immigration and shield voters from “savage globalization.”

Opinion polls have for months shown Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron qualifying on Sunday for the May 7 run-off, but the gap with conservative Francois Fillon and far-leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon has been tightening.

“I will protect you. My first measure as president will be to reinstate France’s borders,” Le Pen said to wide applause and cheers from the crowd of about 5,000, prompting the National Front’s (FN) traditional “This is our home!” chant.

Slamming her rivals, whom she said wanted “savage globalization,” she said hers was the camp of patriots. “The choice on Sunday is simple,” she said. “It is a choice between a France that is rising again and a France that is sinking.”

While no polls have shown Le Pen missing out on the run-off, they are now within the margin of error and any two of the four top candidates have a shot at qualifying. Polls have consistently shown her losing that second round.

With pollsters saying abstentions could hit record highs, convincing voters to go to the polling stations on Sunday is key. Le Pen sought to do so by hitting her party’s trademark anti-EU, anti-immigration themes hard.

“Fight for victory, until the very last minute,” she said. “If every patriot can this week convince just one abstentionist, just one undecided voter, we are sure to win!”

Getting the crowd to boo the European Union and its border-free Schengen area that she would take France out of if elected, Le Pen said: “Mass immigration is not an opportunity for France, it’s a tragedy for France.”

Promising to immediately impose a moratorium on immigration, she said: “The French sometimes have fewer rights than foreigners – even illegal ones.”

Scuffles briefly broke out between 60 to 80 anti-FN protesters and police near the Zenith concert hall in north-east Paris ahead of the rally, a Reuters photographer said.

Police fired teargas at the protesters, some of whom threw chunks of wood. The protesters then left, followed by a small group of police.

During Le Pen’s speech, one young woman jumped on the stage and was immediately carried away by security and a topless woman later shouted out from the middle of the concert hall in an apparent protest against the candidate.

FN lawmaker Gilbert Collard told reporters on arriving at the hall that he was hit in the neck by a beer bottle and that other objects were aimed at him before police intervened. Another FN official, Jean Messiha, said he saw a couple of Molotov cocktails being thrown. Reuters could not verify either comment.

A few hours earlier on the other side of Paris, Le Pen’s most likely run-off opponent, Macron, addressed a crowd nearly four times larger in another concert hall and struck a starkly different, pro-European tone.

But Le Pen’s supporters dismissed her opponent and his ideas.

“Macron is a pure marketing product,” said 26 year-old Veronique Fornilli, an FN youth activist in the Paris region. “Only Le Pen can put France back in order,” she said, also praising the FN leader for her anti-EU, anti-euro stance.

“I want to give France its freedom back, I want to take it out of jail,” Le Pen said of her plans to pull the country out of the euro.</s>Paris (CNN) It has been one of the most unpredictable and dramatic presidential campaigns in French political history -- and with less than a week to go before the election, the outcome remains too close to call.

Only a few weeks ago, it appeared almost guaranteed that the French electorate would vote for a face off between National Front Leader Marine Le Pen and independent candidate Emmanuel Macron.

But as Sunday's first round of voting draws ever closer, the political whirlwind that is far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon appears to be gathering speed.

Will Le Pen ease through? Can Macron persuade voters he's got a plan? Or will the left-wing firebrand Mélenchon cause widespread shock?

Marine Le Pen is expected to make it through to the second round of voting.

Le Pen is intensifying her anti-immigration rhetoric, telling a crowd at the Zenith arena Monday night that her first move as president would be to impose a temporary ban on legal immigration to France.

"I will set up a moratorium on all legal immigration to stop this delirium, this uncontrolled situation," she said.

The National Front leader gave a similar message to supporters Sunday, telling the crowd of about 5,000 people she would "reinstate France's borders."

When she mentioned the European Union, the crowd booed, and she repeated her vow to take France out of the bloc, as well as from the border-free Schengen area.

"Mass immigration is not an opportunity for France, it's a tragedy for France," she told supporters.

"The French sometimes have fewer rights than foreigners -- even illegal ones," she added.

On a night of tension, security personnel were forced to wrestle a protester to the ground after she ran toward Le Pen on the stage.

Outside the venue in northeast Paris Monday night, anti-National Front protesters clashed with police, according to CNN partner BFM-TV.

Le Pen's closest rival, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, would become the youngest man to lead France since Napoleon if he wins.

The 39-year-old addressed supporters at the Bercy arena in Paris, accusing his opponents of wanting to take the country back to the past.

While his rivals have been embroiled in scandal throughout the campaign, the youthful Macron has so far managed to sidestep the controversy.

But his place in the second round of voting is under threat from far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

There remains a deep skepticism within the French electorate of the establishment, and Macron -- a former economy minister and investment banker -- could be affected by that affiliation.

Macron's lack of experience, lack of party and tender years could go against him.

"I want to take the best of the left wing, of the right wing, and even the best of the center," Macron told supporters.

"Some would like France to become Cuba without the sun or Venezuela without the oil," he said of Mélenchon, referring to the left-wing candidate's mantra.

Mélenchon could yet be the wildcard in an election that has seen twists and turns at every opportunity.

Support for the 65-year-old has surged in recent weeks, following his impressive performances in the presidential television debates.

A charismatic speaker who is popular with younger voters, his easy conversational style has won over supporters.

He's the left's best shot at beating the far-right in the second round -- and he also offers something the French electorate is craving: change.

Republican candidate Fillon is still hanging in there, despite a campaign thrown off track by scandal.

Fillon, 63, is under investigation on multiple counts, including embezzlement of public funds.

The candidate has rejected the claims, saying his wife Penelope, who has also been charged, worked for 15 years as his deputy and handled several roles, including managing his schedule and representing him at cultural events. He also said his daughter and son were employed in similar positions for 15 months and six months respectively, which he said is not illegal, but was an "error of judgment."

While the allegations have harmed his campaign, he remains in the race, albeit with only an outside chance of a top-two finish.
With polls showing a close race with Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen of the National Front pledges to temporarily suspend all immigration, "legal and illegal", to France.