Alexandre Chauveau, edited by Solène Delinger 7:51 a.m., March 11, 2022, modified at 7:52 a.m., March 11, 2022

Valérie Pécresse and Éric Zemmour clashed in debate last night on TF1.

An hour and a half of exchanges, sometimes muscular, on the situation in Ukraine, the economy, ecology or even immigration… The two candidates did not make gifts. 

Valérie Pécresse and Eric Zemmour clashed this Thursday evening during a debate of an hour and a half, broadcast on TF1 and LCI.

In difficulty in the polls, the candidate of the Republicans and that of the party Reconquest!

played big in this televised duel, during which they did not give each other any gifts …

"You're just a technocrat"

From the start of the debate, the first attack fuses from the side of Valérie Pécresse.

"When you're under Putin's influence, you don't want to call yourself a patriot. And that's why, Mr. Zemmour, you're discredited for presiding over France," she says to the former polemicist.

The Republican candidate is then accused by Eric Zemmour of lacking conviction.

"In truth, you are only a technocrat, a manager. Politics escapes you, because politics is having convictions. And you have been betraying them constantly for fifteen years. You left the LR party because that he was too right in the time of Mr. Wauquiez, right? And now you are, in your speech, more on the right than him", he told him.

The debate sometimes turns into a wrestling fight, like this exchange on the feasibility of zero immigration wanted by Eric Zemmour: "Everything is bogus with you, Madame Pécresse, especially in the fight against immigration".

>> Find Europe Matin in replay and podcast here

“We need labor immigration”

"But it's you", answers Valérie Pécresse.

"You will not be able to do zero immigration because you are an ideologue, because you are not in the concrete, because you do not see the reality. We need work immigration in certain trades and we need to bring the illegal immigrants home".

Valérie Pécresse was particularly offensive.

Eric Zemmour wanted to highlight the supposed inconsistencies of his opponent.

The two candidates, in difficulty in the polls, have only one month left to convince.