My guest is Benjamin Haddad.

Benjamin Haddad is the senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.

And the interests of transparency, I should point out, I'm a member of the advisory group of this Europe Center.

Welcome to the podcast, Ben.

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Right. Thank you for being here. So we're going to talk about France and France in all these different manifestations, domestic politics, France and the EU, transatlantic relations, and maybe if we have time, even Anglo-French relations. But let's start with the domestic scene. Three months signed as a presidential election. We all know that. Without being too presumptuous,

I think we can assume that President Macron will be in the second round. How do you rate his chances

of winning a second term and who do you think he'll be up against in that critical second round?

I think at this point it's still a pretty open race. It's clear that Emmanuel Macron is the frontrunner.

He is way ahead of his different opponents in the first round. So if you look at the polls today,

and it's pretty stable actually in the last couple months. So he's ahead with about 24% going into

the second round. And then behind him, around 16, 17%. You have Marine Le Pen, who is, of course, his far right opponent in 2017.

Valéry Pecrest, who is the president of the region, in Leyen, Paris, and who is the Republican candidate,

so the center-right, Sarcoz's party, is around the same level as Marine Le Pen, neck and neck.

And then a little bit behind, you have Eric Zamour,

the nationalist far-right journalist who made sort of a splash

at the beginning of the campaign, was seen as a likely contender in the second round.

But as I think has struggled in the last few weeks, basically since he officially announced

he was running, I think his candidacy is seen as so nostalgic, so looking to the past,

and so aggressive also in its tone.

We've seen a lot of fighting, for example, at some of his rallies, that it's really alienated

a big part of the electorate.

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