Emmanuel Macron warned that his nationalist opponent, Marine Le Pen, risks starting a "civil war” in France with a ban on Muslim headscarves, while Le Pen sought to portray the president as an elitist in thrall to global finance.
In a televised debate before the final round of the presidential election on Sunday, Le Pen called Macron a "Mozart of Finance,” a moniker that has followed him since his days as an investment banker. She said his economic policies had been a disappointment and referred to herself as the "spokeswoman of the French people.”
The head-to-head got progressively more heated as the night wore on, addressing issues from tech startups to the role of religion in public life, though it didn’t reach the hostility of their previous encounter in 2017.