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		</div><p>Polls have opened across France for the first round of the country’s presidential election, where up to 48 million eligible voters will be choosing between 12 candidates.</p>
<p>President Emmanuel Macron is seeking a second five-year term, with a strong challenge from the far right.</p>
<p>Polls opened at 8am local time on Sunday and close at 7pm (6pm BST) in most places and at 8pm in some larger cities.</p>
<p>France operates a manual system for elections: Voters are obliged to cast ballots in person, ones that will be hand-counted when the voting closes.</p>
<p>Unless someone gets more than half of the nationwide vote, there will be a second and decisive round on Sunday April 24.</p>
<p>Bundled up against an April chill, voters lined up to cast ballots at a polling station in southern Paris on Sunday before it opened.</p>
<p>Once inside, they placed their paper ballots into envelopes and then into a transparent box, some wearing masks or using hand gel as part of Covid-19 measures.</p>
<p>Aside from Mr Macron, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon are among the prominent figures vying to take the presidential Elysee.</p>
<p>Mr Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term.</p>
<p>But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages as the pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices roared back as dominant election themes for many low-income households. They could drive many voters on Sunday into the arms of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Mr Macron’s political nemesis.</p>
<p>Mr Macron trounced Ms Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest president in 2017. The win for the former banker – now 44 – was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.</p>
<p>With populist Viktor Orban winning a fourth consecutive term as Hungary’s prime minister days ago, eyes have now turned to France’s resurgent far-right candidates — especially National Rally leader Ms Le Pen, who wants to ban Muslim headscarves in streets and halal and kosher butchers, and drastically reduce immigration from outside Europe.</p>
<p>This election has the potential to reshape France’s post-war identity and indicate whether European populism is ascendant or in decline.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, if Mr Macron wins, it will be seen as a victory for the European Union.</p>
<p>Observers say a Macron re-election would spell real likelihood for increased cooperation and investment in European security and defence — especially with a new pro-EU German government.</p>
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