“Marine Le Pen's chaos is like a Christmas present. The wrapping is very beautiful, but we don't know what's inside. But this is not a gift, it's not Christmas and you can't go back in an election when you realise it wasn't what you wanted", said Paulo Marques, mayor of the city of Aulnay-sous-Bois who chaired the committee of Portuguese that supported candidate Valérie Pécresse in the first round of elections.

For the Franco-Portuguese mayor, the defeat of his candidate “wasn't easy”, but now that Macron will face Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential elections, Paulo Marques believes that right-wing voters go, “with a sense of responsibility ”, maintain the will of Pécresse who asked her supporters not to vote for the extreme right. However, that will not be enough for Emmanuel Macron to win.

Having won 28% of the votes at the polls in the first round, Emmanuel Macron is now trying to gain ground, accelerating the electoral campaign and touring France to explain his program, but there is little time left before the final vote.

Fighting false ideas

“It was a good result, in the sense that it had more votes than in 2017, but we cannot be satisfied because we have seen people's dissatisfaction and many protest votes. Voters are seduced by illusory promises and it is difficult to fight false ideas. I am very worried”, warned Rosa André, French-Portuguese and municipal councillor in Saint-Germain-en-Laye for the Republic in Marche party that supports the President.

“Marine Le Pen wants to remove from the Constitution the human rights of all of us, equality. Portuguese mayors in France would be outlawed by Marine Le Pen for giving relevance to our Portuguese origins”, underlined Paulo Marques, who leads the CÍVICA association, which groups all elected locals of Portuguese origin in France.