Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron was born on December 21, 1977 in the city of Amiens.

He is the youngest president to be re-elected president of France with 58% of the vote against Marine Le Pen with 42% of the ballots, according to the first election results, French media reported, BTV reported.

He became the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

Before him, it was Jaj Chirac, who was in power from 1995 to 2007.

At 5 pm, turnout was 63.23%, 2 percentage points less than in the 2017 election at the same time, AFP reported.

Macron, 44, is a centrist and a staunch European.

His opponents describe him as arrogant and "president of the rich."

The far-right leader, Marin Le Pen, 53, has been criticized for her ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The runoff is a repeat of the duel between the two from 5 years ago, which was won by Macron with 66 against 34 percent.

All opinion polls in recent days have predicted a victory for the 44-year-old pro-European centrist, but his lead over the nationalist has ranged from 6 to 15 percentage points, depending on the polls.

In the first round of voting on April 10th, 10 presidential candidates were eliminated.

Who will become the next leader of France largely depended on what the people who supported the losing candidates would do today.

The issue is difficult, especially for left-wing voters who do not like Macron but do not want to see Le Pen in power.

Macron's second term depended in part on their mobilization, prompting the French leader to make numerous appeals to left-wing voters in recent days.

"Think about what British citizens said a few hours before Brexit or people in the United States before the election of Donald Trump: 'I'm not going.'

What's the point?

"I can tell you that they regretted it the next day," Macron warned this week on France 5 television. "So if you want to avoid the unthinkable ... make a choice," he urged hesitant French voters.

The two rivals clashed in the last days of the election campaign, including on Wednesday, when they took part in a televised debate face to face.

Macron said the loan Le Pen's party received in 2014 from a Czech-Russian bank made it unsuitable to work with Moscow amid its invasion of Ukraine.

He also said her plans to ban Muslim women in France from wearing headscarves in public places would spark a "civil war" in the country, which has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.

"When someone explains to you that Islam is tantamount to Islamism, tantamount to terrorism, tantamount to a problem, these are definitely far-right views," Macron told AFP on Friday.

In his victory speech in 2017, Macron had promised to do everything during his five-year term so that the French "have no more reason to vote for the far right."

Five years later, this challenge has not been overcome.

Le Pen consolidated his place on the French political scene as a result of many years of efforts to soften his position so that it would not be perceived as extreme.

This time, Le Pen's campaign sought to attract voters who are struggling with rising food and energy prices amid the aftermath of Russia's war in Ukraine.

The 53-year-old candidate said cutting living costs would be a top priority if she is elected France's first female president.

What else did the two candidates offer in their election programs?

Macron plans to increase the minimum retirement age from 62 to 65.

"I don't want to increase our taxes, I don't want to increase our debt, I even want to start paying it off in the next five years," Macron said during the debate.

"That's why I want to work harder."

The convinced Europhile will continue to push for the development of his so-called "strategic autonomy" of Europe in the fields of defense, technology, agriculture and energy, and will reduce the bloc's dependence on other forces.

Macron is seeking to reorient the EU to a more protectionist stance by blocking some free trade deals with other blocs, such as South America's Mercosur, and creating a mechanism to tighten controls on foreign acquisitions of EU strategic companies.

Marin Le Pen transformed the former National Front, turning his father's party, whose economic ideals were the free market and a small government, into a high-cost protectionist party.

It wants to introduce a "buy French" policy on public procurement, reduce the minimum retirement age to 60 for those who started work 20 years ago, abolish the income tax for people under 30 and reduce VAT on energy from 20 to 5.5 percent.

It also promises to spend 2 billion euros over five years to raise the salaries of health workers and hire an additional 10,000 people in the health sector.

Teachers' salaries will increase, she said, by 15 per cent in five years if she becomes president.

Le Pen claims that there is no "secret plan" for France to leave the EU, its single currency or the Schengen area.

Opponents say her policy will, at best, lead to new tensions in the bloc, whose unity has been tested in recent years by the migration crisis, the UK and the COVID pandemic, and, at worst, Frexit. .

Le Pen said he would reduce France's contributions to the EU budget, renegotiate the Schengen agreement and reintroduce checks on goods entering the country from other EU countries.

She said she would seek to restore the rule of French law.

Macron and Le Pen clashed in a heated election debate

Emmanuel Macron