After the outgoing president during a walkabout in Strasbourg on Tuesday, it was the RN candidate who on Friday in a market in Pertuis (Vaucluse) faced a veiled woman challenging her plan to ban the veil in the public space.

The two candidates are upside down on a subject that underlines for one his strict attachment to secularism in the spirit of the 1905 law, for the other the fight against Islamism.

But the two contenders for the Elysée also play tightrope walkers.

In the Alsatian capital, Mr. Macron, challenged on his "feminism" by a young veiled woman, considered it "beautiful" that his interlocutor who declares to wear this religious sign "by choice", can ask him such a question.

Two days later in Le Havre, he pretended to question: "there is no country in the world that prohibits the veil on public roads, do you want to be the first?"

A nod to the Muslim electorate who voted largely in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round (69%) according to an Ifop poll for La Croix?

Mr. Macron poses as a champion of the defense of all religious freedoms: "if the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen bans the veil, by our Constitution, she will have to ban the yarmulke, she will have to ban the cross, she will have to ban other religious symbols".

But the candidate is also seeking to settle the criticism provoked by his so-called "fight against separatism" law, accused of having fueled distrust of Islam, which the majority has always defended.

"Error"

It was precisely at the time of the debates around this law that Marine Le Pen had proposed a host of measures "aimed at combating Islamist ideologies", including the ban on the veil included in her presidential program.

Marine Le Pen proposes to sanction with a fine the wearing of the veil in the public space which she equates to an Islamist "uniform".

Marine Le Pen went to the market in Pertuis (Vaucluse) on April 15, 2022 CHRISTOPHE SIMON AFP

"Women who don't wear it are isolated, victims of pressure, insulted," says the RN candidate.

Confronted with a veiled woman in the Vaucluse, she remained straight in her boots without however wanting to prolong the exchange too much.

"The ban on the veil is essential", she highlighted Friday on BFMTV, retro-pedaling on remarks made a few seconds earlier where she affirmed that it was not "the most fundamental element , urgent" of his bill.

In his own camp, the measure is not unanimous.

"It's a mistake" and "not possible to implement", slipped Robert Ménard, mayor of Béziers and support of Mrs. Le Pen.

Fueled by criticism from the Macron camp, the emergence of this theme brings it back to the identity component of its presidential project likely to make it more divisive in the eyes of abstainers or some of the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon whose votes it guinea to win the second round.

Emmanuel Macron speaks with the workers of Siemens Gamesa in Le Havre on April 14, 2022 Ludovic MARIN AFP

Controversy around the veil by a student at the National Assembly, question around the wearing of the veil in sports competitions or the desire to ban it for young girls: the five-year term has not been stingy with controversy around this religious sign which deep fractures in France since the affair of Creil (Oise) in 1989 where three teenagers had been excluded from a college for wearing the veil.

© 2022 AFP