Ten days before the presidential elections get under way in France, French President Emmanuel Macron issued a warning on Thursday about rising support for the country's far-right.
"There is a pair is advancing with radical right-wing ideology," Macron said, in a reference to the far-right candidates Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour.
Recent polls suggest that Macron is in line for a second term with predictions he will win 28% to 28.5% of the vote in the first round of voting, ahead of his closest challenger Le Pen, who is predicted to receive 20% to 21% of the vote.
However, Le Pen has been gaining ground in the final weeks of the campaign and is steadily narrowing the gap between her and Macron, who has seen a slight drop off in support.
Given his current efforts to find a peaceful solution to the war in Ukraine, Macron has not fully devoted his time to the election campaign.
In France, if no candidate secures an absolute majority in the first round of voting, a second round run-off between the two candidates receiving the most votes in the first round is held.
Hard-right candidate Zemmour
Here, in a head-to-head contest against Le Pen, Macron's lead is even slimmer. Polls suggest he would win 52.5% of the vote compared to Le Pen's 47.5%.
The hard right candidate Zemmour, who briefly reached second place in the polls, has seen his support drop off dramatically since entering the race and now languishes at around 10% in the polls.
While Zemmour, who has in the past been fined for racial discrimination and for inciting hatred against Muslims, is trying to draw attention to himself with ever more radical ideas, Le Pen has been portraying herself as more moderate.
Macron warned people against trivializing her party, saying that he personally had never done so, and that the threat posed by the far-right remained a serious one.
