Our fact-checking of Macron and Le Pen's statements during the debate

• Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron debated on Wednesday during the traditional confrontation between the two rounds.

• Only four days before the election, they notably clashed over purchasing power, the war in Ukraine, poverty and even pensions.

• The Fake Off section of

  20 Minutes

  verified several assertions of the two candidates for the Elysée.

In just four days, the French and the French will know the name of the one who will be at the head of the country for the next five years.

The traditional debate between the two rounds, which was held on Wednesday evening, was an opportunity for Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen to compare their programs and their ideas.

A duel of almost three hours and which turned out to be less eventful than in 2017.

Find our file on the election

•  Marine Le Pen: “Retirement pensions were not indexed to inflation during this five-year term.

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True.

Marine Le Pen is committed to ensuring that pensions are increased if she is elected President of the Republic.

She also argues that "the indexation of pensions [on inflation] was not respected" during Emmanuel Macron's five-year term.

However, this has been the rule since 1987, enshrined in article 27 of law n°2003-775 of August 21, 2003.

The revaluation of pensions normally occurs each year on 1 January.

The calculation is based on the ratio between the inflation observed in October (over twelve rolling months) and that observed at the same time the previous year.

But several artifices, including the postponement of the effective revaluation date, have been used on several occasions for a decade.

Thus, since the beginning of the five-year term, the revaluation of retirement pensions has been lower than inflation every year.

Again in 2022, pensions increased by 1.1% while inflation in 2021 was 1.6%.

Emmanuel Macron: “Our pension system is unbalanced until the mid-2030s, tells us the independent body in charge and which is called the COR.

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Rather false.

To justify his desire to push back the retirement age to 65, Emmanuel Macron relies on the Pensions Orientation Council, which published a report on June 11, 2021. Evaluated at 14.7% of GDP in 2020, the share of pension expenditure would decrease from 2022 to 13.7% of GDP, and this until 2030, estimates the COR.

This is thanks to the post-Covid-19 crisis economic rebound and the excess mortality caused by the health crisis.

In all the scenarios considered, this share would even decrease between 11.3 and 13% from 2030 to 2070.

On the other hand, the COR report does not speak of an imbalance until the mid-2030s. It is the Pension Monitoring Committee, placed under the Prime Minister, which draws this conclusion after examining the COR report, insisting on “ uncertainties regarding the rate of recovery from the crisis, the long-term demographic and economic development of the country.

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•  Marine Le Pen: “There are hundreds of thousands of [foreign] workers posted to France.

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Fake.

According to a publication by Dares, the statistics institute of the Ministry of Labour, dated June 30, 2021, over the whole of 2019, excluding road transport, 261,300 employees were posted at least once to France by companies established abroad.

“The number of posted workers present on a given date […] averaged 72,600 in 2019 (+5.9% compared to 2018)”.

We are therefore far from the hundreds of thousands of posted workers cited by the candidate of the National Rally who seems to be confusing with the 675,000 postings that these workers have carried out, still according to Dares.

•  Marine Le Pen: “There were 400,000 additional poor people under your five-year term.

  We are therefore in a country where there are 9.8 million poor people as we speak.

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True.

Often presented as the president of the rich, Marine Le Pen has accused Emmanuel Macron of having increased poverty in France under his five-year term.

had already addressed the issue of poverty at the start of the campaign when Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced 10 million poor people in France.

According to data published by INSEE, “9.2 million people live below the monetary poverty line”.

These figures relate to 2019, the latest year for which data are available.

At the start of Emmanuel Macron's mandate, in 2017, it was estimated that France had 8.9 million poor people.

That is, effectively an increase of 400,000 people below the poverty line.

In its projections, INSEE estimates that the poverty figure in 2022 could be 9.3 million.

“I take note of Madame Le Pen's positions [in support of Ukraine], which do not correspond to the positions that your party and your parliamentarians defend in the European Parliament, whether it is a question of protecting Ukrainians when they come to our soil, additional sanctions to the first package, such as financial aid to Ukraine, which you opposed.

»

Partially true.

For the MEPs of the National Rally, there is a before and an after February 24, the date of the outbreak of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

Before, they voted against the resolution which granted macro-financial assistance of 1.2 billion euros to Ukraine on February 16.

In December, they also opposed a resolution supporting the country's "independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity" and condemning "Russia's current large military deployment along the border with Ukraine".

After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, a distinction must be made between the RN MEPs and those who joined Eric Zemmour and Reconquête.

RN deputies, such as Thierry Mariani or Aurélia Beigneux, voted in favor of resolutions, at the end of March, providing emergency aid to Ukrainian refugees or financial support to neighboring countries hosting refugees such as Poland.

Jordan Bardella, acting president of the RN, stands out by not having been in the hemicycle during the votes concerning Ukraine.

Similarly, RN MPs were not present during the vote on sanctions against Russia, which took place on April 7.

The deputies who joined Eric Zemmour like Nicolas Bay or Jérôme Rivière abstained during this vote, the proposals "going too far" and which could "harm even more to Ukraine and to French and European interests", have- they justified in their explanation of vote.

They also abstained on a resolution seeking to grant protection to children and young people fleeing the war in Ukraine.

They saw it as instrumentalization “to promote the reception, relocation and integration of all migrants as well as LGBT ideology”.

•  Marine Le Pen: “You are the president who has created 600 billion additional debt in five years, two thirds of which have nothing to do with the Covid.

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True and false.

According to INSEE figures, the debt rose from 2.231 billion euros at the end of the second quarter of 2017 to 2.813 billion euros at the end of 2021. That is almost 600 billion more, as advanced by the candidate of the National rally.

The government estimates the state's Covid debt at 165 billion euros.

To which must be added the fall in social and tax revenues linked to the drop in GDP.

Questioned by our colleagues from

, François Ecalle, former magistrate at the Court of Auditors, figures this shortfall at 160 billion euros.

Thus, the share of the debt linked to the pandemic is

325 billion euros, or 54%, and not only a third as stated by Marine Le Pen.

•  Emmanuel Macron: “The means of justice have been increased by 30% under my five-year term”

  
  

Exaggerated.

To verify this assertion, we immersed ourselves in the finance laws.

The 2022 budget, published in the Official Journal of December 31, 2021, provides very precisely for an envelope of 10.74 billion euros for all justice services.

Five years earlier, in the 2017 budget validated under François Hollande, the means of justice were 8.54 billion.

Under Emmanuel Macron's five-year term, the means of justice have therefore increased by 25.7%.

An increase in credits which does not prevent magistrates and justice personnel from expressing their dissatisfaction with the lack of resources.

•  Marine Le Pen: “I think you want to put wind turbines on all the coasts, except opposite Le Touquet.

  All have been recorded, except the one opposite Le Touquet.

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Lack of context.

According to our research, Marine Le Pen is right when she says that there are no other offshore wind farm projects that have been suspended, apart from that of 40 offshore wind turbines proposed between Berck and Le Touquet .

But it's going a bit too fast to say that all the other projects have been approved since the process is long before a park is installed (a timeframe considered too slow by manufacturers).

For example, in January the National Commission for Public Debate requested additional expertise for the Île d'Oléron park concerning the distance for the installation of wind turbines at sea, which could call into question this point in the project.

The result will be known in July.

Marine Le Pen's allusion to an intervention by Emmanuel Macron to suspend the Le Touquet project, where the presidential couple has a second home, is not based on any evidence.

The president also accused her of “conspiracy”.

On Twitter, the mayor of Le Touquet, Didier Fasquelle (LR) denied the candidate's insinuation and returned to the chronology of events.

“The wind farm project was rejected in 2017 following an approach by the Horizon collective that I created and which prevented Ségolène Royal, François Hollande's minister, from going through in force on the eve of the presidential elections.

Emmanuel Macron has nothing to do with it, ”he wrote.

This is confirmed in a letter from the prefect of the North and the maritime prefect of the Channel, dated July 27, 2017. It was published on social networks by Thibaut Guilluy, opposed to the project and LREM candidate for the legislative elections in 2017. submitted our conclusions to the ministry on May 3, 2017, indicating that the conditions favorable to the launch of a call for tenders […] were not met at this stage”, underline the prefects, i.e. four days before the election of Emmanuel Macron.

•  Marine Le Pen: “When you talk about tax cuts, you forget to say that the biggest drop was obviously the abolition of the wealth tax and that was the drop in the “flat tax”.

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Fake.

As Emmanuel Macron pointed out in response to his opponent, it is the abolition of the housing tax that has cost the state the most, and not the abolition of the ISF or the “flat tax”.

We consulted the publications of the Institut Montaigne, a liberal think tank, and the Observatory of Tax Justice, created by the anti-globalization association Attac, both of which analyzed the tax reforms implemented during the five-year term.

The cost to the State of the abolition of the wealth tax, replaced by the property wealth tax, is around 3.8 billion euros per year, estimate the two organizations.

The "flat tax", or single flat-rate levy (PFU), which consists of a single tax rate on capital income, varies between 1.1 or 2 billion euros according to Attac.

It had been valued at 1.5 billion euros in the 2018 finance bill. The Institut Montaigne estimates, in a major decryption published in August 2021, that due to this increase in dividends, the cost "ex post of the creation of the PFU probably sucked”.

For the housing tax, the Institut Montaigne estimates the cost borne by the State at 18 billion euros per year.

This abolition will be effective for all households, even the wealthiest, in 2023. Its total cost will then amount to 23 billion euros, indicates the Observatory of tax justice.

•  Marine Le Pen: “In 6th grade […],

  20% of students do not master basic knowledge.

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To qualify.

At the start of the 2018 school year, National Education indicated that “20% of students do not master basic knowledge at the end of primary school”.

Contacted, the ministry did not respond to our request to know the source of this figure.

A more recent information note provides a more precise overview of the results of pupils entering 6th grade.

In September 2021, 89% of these young people had mastered knowledge and skills in French, and they were almost 72% in mathematics, notes a ministerial statistical service.

Pupils who have repeated a year or those entering a REP+ middle school, reinforced priority education, are less likely to master this knowledge.

•  Emmanuel Macron: "

  I

  ended the closure of classes without the mayor's agreement.

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To qualify.

Emmanuel Macron was referring to a measure announced by Jean-Michel Blanquer in March 2020. Sensitive subject if any, the Minister of National Education had undertaken that there would be no class closure in primary school in rural areas without the consent of the mayor.

This measure, however, was only to be valid for the start of the school year in September 2020. It no longer seems to be relevant in certain territories: Valérie Rabault, PS deputy for Tarn-et-Garonne, underlined after the debate that the mayors were not consulted for 15 class closures scheduled for September 2022.

In 2019, Emmanuel Macron also pledged that there would be no more school closures without consulting the mayor.

“To my knowledge, this has been respected, explains to

Jean-Paul Carteret, vice-president of the Association of rural mayors of France.

Have there been any exceptions?

I do not know.

The elected official adds that in the event of a change in the school map, the mayor is invited by the Dasen (the national education services in the departments).

•  Marine Le Pen: “[You replaced] the French flag under the Arc de Triomphe with the European flag.

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Fake.

Marine Le Pen alludes to the deployment of the European flag under the Arc de Triomphe on December 31, 2021. The standard had been put up to mark the start of the French presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The French flag did not appear there, which had triggered the wrath of the candidate, as well as those of Eric Zemmour and Valérie Pécresse.

The tricolor flag had not been "removed", then replied Clément Beaune, Secretary of State for European Affairs.

“The grand bulwark figures for major ceremonies, on its own.

The European flag has been installed where there was nothing.

“The flag in the colors of the EU had finally been removed on the night of January 1 to 2, “as planned”, had assured the Elysée.

•  Emmanuel Macron: “None of us went to seek [loans] from Russian banks, and even less from banks that were close to power”

  
  

The president attacked his opponent over a loan taken out in 2014 by the National Front.

The party had borrowed 9 million euros from the First Czech-Russian Bank (FCRB), a Czech-Russian bank "of modest size and little known", according to Mediapart.

Marine Le Pen then justified this appeal by the refusal of French banks to lend money to her party.

Two years later, the bank goes bankrupt and the loan ends up being taken over by Aviazapchast, a Russian company specializing in aircraft spare parts and run by a former military man.

The party had to repay the 9 million euros in 2019. In 2020, the RN and the Russian company reach an amicable agreement: the party must pay the reimbursement until 2028.

On Twitter, Alexei Navalny, an opponent of the Russian president, on Wednesday called the FCRB "Putin's laundering organization".

The bank's vice president, Dmitry Merkulov, was charged with embezzlement, a case that was still pending in August 2021, according to the Kommersant website.

FCRB was owned by Roman Popov, who was previously head of the financial department of Stroytransgaz, a Russian gas pipeline construction company.

Stroytransgaz gradually took control of the bank from 2002, according to

, before Roman Popov became its main shareholder in 2007.

•  Marine Le Pen: “In reality the unemployment figures, that is to say the unemployed A, B and C were 5.5 million when you were elected.

  They are 5.4 million.

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To read again.

We had already fact-checked this assertion of the candidate, which earned Emmanuel Macron this reaction already entered into the annals: “It is not Gérard Majax this evening Madame Le Pen!

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