Transcript

The important news of the moment in France is the election of the new president or the new presidency of the Republic.

It's an exciting topic and very rich in vocabulary. It's really a good time to talk about this topic because the election starts this Sunday, April 10, 2022.

Hello everyone, welcome to this video about the elections in France.

I hope that you are motivated and that this topic interests you. We will see together how this presidential election works, the main candidates and especially a lot of vocabulary.

This vocabulary will be very interesting for you, if you want to watch election reports, candidates, political debates or if you read articles on this topic.

If you speak English, you will realize that there are a lot of words between French and English that are very close on this theme.

There are a lot of transparent words, so it's easy to understand. A few weeks ago, I told you about this book "Kill the French".

In this book, you can read 100 stories written in French.

The particularity of these stories is that they are written with many words that are transparent between English and French. You will progress quickly thanks to these words that are easily understood and that will help you to understand the context and especially to understand and integrate more complicated vocabulary words.

Why am I talking about this book again? It's because there is a story about politics, about a political discourse where we find many similar words between French and English.

To make this video, I was inspired by this book. By the way, I give you in the description the link to find this book on Amazon if you are interested.

This video will be divided into five parts. First, we'll talk about the current president. Then we're going to look together at who can vote. Well, not me. And I'll explain why. Then we'll look at how this election works. Then we'll talk about the major candidates and the polls.

And finally, we will conclude with the link between the media and this election.

Let's start by talking about the current president. You probably know this, but France is a democracy. The people elect their president. The president is elected by the people. He is elected by the citizens, by the population.

Emmanuel Macron was elected five years ago, he was 39 years old. He is the youngest French president. When he ran for president, Emmanuel Macron created a brand new party called "La République En Marche". Often, one also hears simply "En Marche".

I don't know if you noticed, but "En Marche" and "Emmanuel Macron" have the same initials. I don't know if it's done on purpose, but you'd think so.

This party is centrist, it places itself in the center. When we talk about politics, we often talk about the left and the right. This party is not really on the left or on the right, but rather in the center.

He has both left-wing and right-wing ideas. We can say that Emmanuel Macron's policy is social, liberal. This means that it is a mixture between ideas that come from socialism and ideas that come from liberalism.

Emmanuel Macron is the current president, but he is running for re-election. He is also a candidate for this 2022 election. One important thing to know is that in the Constitution, in France, in the law, the president cannot be elected more than twice in a row.

He cannot serve more than two terms in a row. If Emmanuel Macron is re-elected, he will not be able to run again. So that's a maximum of ten years in power in France in a row.

Now let's talk about who can vote in this presidential election. If you have been following me for several months, you probably know my secret. I live in France, I speak French. French is my mother tongue, but I am not French, I am Belgian.

French nationality is the first criterion for voting in this election.

Only the French can vote for the future president. I find it very frustrating not to be able to vote for the president in the country where I live, but that's the way it is, it's the law.

The second condition to be able to vote is to be at least 18 years old.

18 years old, in France, is the age of majority. They say you are of age. I am of age. 18 years old in France is the age to be able to vote. But it is also the age to be able to get a driver's license, to be able to drive cars.

To vote, you must also be registered on a list of electors. It is not automatic. You are not going to receive a letter at home telling you to come and vote.

No, it is up to you to register in a city as a voter. Often it is the city where you live, but it can also be, for example, the city where your parents live or any city. But it is the city where you will have to go on Election Day.

Voting is a synonym for voting. An important thing to know also if you want to vote in France but you are not available on the day of the vote because, for example, you work or you are on vacation. You can make what is called a proxy.

When you give your proxy, you authorize someone else to vote in your place. Be careful, it is always better to choose someone who has the same political ideas as you.

Let's take a look at how this presidential election is going.

One of the first things you need to know in terms of vocabulary, if you watch reports on this event on television, is that you can also say "the presidential".

We don't always say the presidential election, we can also say the presidential election. Sometimes you hear "the presidential" as well. This is used to refer to the election. The presidential election is held every five years. It is a five-year term. The term that the president will serve is called the five-year term. To be a candidate for women, you must have 500 sponsors from someone who is already elected.

What are we talking about when we talk about sponsorships?

A sponsorship, in fact, is the validation of your candidacy. To be a candidate, you need 500 people to validate your candidacy. But it can't be just anyone. It must be people who are already elected by the population.

For example a mayor, so the mayor of a city, a deputy or a senator. The deputies and senators, in France, are the people who will propose laws and vote the laws. The deputies work in the National Assembly and the senators work in the Senate.

The National Assembly and the Senate are the two houses of Parliament in France. This rule of sponsorships was put in place to avoid that anyone can run for president. It serves to validate the seriousness of the candidate, to show that the candidate is serious.

This presidential election is organized in two rounds, in two parts, in two times. We will vote twice.

This year, the French vote for the first round on April 10 and for the second round on April 22.

There are always two weeks between the two votes, between the two elections. In the first round, there are many candidates, you have the choice.

And in the second round, we will keep only the two best. When I say best, I mean those who got the most votes in the first round.

In reality, one can also be elected in the first vote, in the first round. To be elected president in a single vote, you need to have obtained more than 50 % of the votes. So the votes are the votes of the population.

It's really very rare. I think it has never happened in France.

But who are the main candidates and the main political parties.

Before the election, candidates are campaigning. Campaigning is the time before the election when candidates present their platform and talk about their ideas, trying to convince people to vote for them.

During this period, the candidates and their teams will, for example, speak in the media, go to markets to distribute leaflets.

A leaflet is a piece of paper on which the candidate and the program he or she defends are presented. A candidate's program is the list of his ideas.

These are the things he would like to implement if he is elected president. During the campaign, the candidates will also hold political rallies, meetings where they will talk about their programs and make speeches.

Speeches exactly like the story in the book I was telling you about.

Here, it's a mayor making a speech, but it's the same thing, it's the same vocabulary.

There are a lot of transparent words like elections, voting, constitution, nation or president. Each candidate will defend his political ideas. Small precision on the different synonyms around the political personalities.

We talk about politicians. But we can also simply talk about politics, so a politician or a politician. We can also talk about a politician.

Politician, politician or politician, politician or politician.

Historically, in France, there are two main parties : the right and the left. The right. The right-wing party is called Les Républicains, LR. You can also hear or read in the articles.

On the left, it is the Socialist Party, the PS. The left has rather social ideas, defends equality between people. They will for example want to invest in education or want richer people to pay more taxes.

The right wing defends more the traditions and the individual property. Of course, there are many other political currents, many other political parties and you will see that for this presidential election, it is not the traditional parties that interest the population the most.

Other types of parties include the center. I told you about it at the beginning of the video. This is the case of Emmanuel Macron's party, which is a centrist party, neither really left nor really right. It brings together ideas from both the left and the right.

There is also the extreme left, which has ideas quite close to communism. There is the extreme right, which is generally anti-immigration and nationalist, which favors the nation.

There is also the ecologist party. It is a party that talks a lot about ecology, that will defend the rights of animals, that wants to protect the planet, to limit pollution thanks to renewable energies, etc.

The survey I am posting is from the end of March. That's when I shot this video. Polls are very important for politicians, for candidates, because it gives them an idea of voting intentions. So it can give an idea of the results of the election, even if the polls change often.

Sometimes all it takes is a speech to really change positions in the poll. At the top of the poll, you see the outgoing president Emmanuel Macron. Outgoing president, that's an expression we use to talk about the president who is finishing his term. So he is coming to the end of the period for which he was elected.

Here he is running again and we see that he is really in the lead. He is very high in the polls. He is way ahead of his competitors.

Just after, we find Marine Le Pen. Marine Le Pen's party is the Rassemblement National. It is a party of the extreme right. Where, as I said, it is a party against immigration that always wants to favor the French, so for example in the search for a job or housing.

Then, in third place, we find Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his far left party. So we had the center, the far right and now the far left. His party is called La France Insoumise.

When someone is insubordinate, it means that he doesn't submit to the orders that are given to him. When someone is submissive, it means that he respects all the orders that are given to him. This party fights capitalism and economic liberalism.

In fourth position, we find again a party that is qualified by the media as extreme right. So center, extreme right, extreme left and again extreme right.

This party is brand new and is represented by Éric Zemmour.

I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He's a journalist, a writer, and he's just now getting into politics. You may have heard of him because he creates a lot of controversy.

He says a lot of things that make people talk about him, often badly.

He too is against immigration, he wants zero immigration. This means that he does not want any foreigner to come and live in France. He is also, for example, against the right of the soil.

If you were born in France, you can have French nationality. Éric Zemmour wants to abolish this to keep only the right of blood.

After, you see much further in the polls, we have Valérie Pécresse who is the candidate of the traditional right-wing party Les Républicains. And a little below, we have Yannick Jadot who is the representative of the ecology, of an ecologist party.

And still, even further, we have Anne Hidalgo. Anne Hidalgo is the mayor of the city of Paris, but above all she is the candidate of the Socialist Party.

So, as I was saying, the two traditional political families in France were the Socialist Party and the Republicans. And you see here, she is only at 2 % in the polls.

That's really very, very low for such a big party. It really seems that people are fed up with traditional parties and want to go to other types of parties, to other types of politics.

Let's go to the last part of this video: the presidential election and the media. The media have a lot of influence on the vote of the population, on the vote of the French.

And it is normal, because it is the media that will give the floor, that will put forward these candidates. There are many debates on television and radio between the candidates.

They are invited in many shows to talk about their political ideas, to talk about their program. Moreover, there is something very interesting during this presidential election in France. There is going to be speaking time that is given to each candidate.

For example, one candidate will have the right to speak, say, 20 hours in the media, another will only have the right to speak 12 hours.

And there is a kind of media police, called ARCOM, that will monitor that. But why are some candidates allowed to speak more than others in the media?

Well, actually, it's going to depend on a number of factors. It's going to depend on different things. For example, where they stand in the polls. Whether a lot of people intend to vote for them or not. Another thing that's going to be important is the size of a party.

For example, you can see that in the polls, the traditional parties don't have many voting intentions, but on the other hand, they have many mayors and they have many MPs. They still have a lot of political weight.

That's why, for example, we see a lot of Anne Hidalgo, who represents the left on television, even though she only has 2% of voting intentions.

Fortunately, from two weeks before the first round, before the first vote, there is an equality of speaking time. Each candidate will have the right to the same number of hours to speak in the media, on the radio or on television.

Of course, it has to be at the same times, more or less.

You can't have one candidate at 2 a.m. and another at 8 p.m. It has to be fair.

That's it, this video is over for today. I hope that this topic of elections has interested you. I hope that with all these vocabulary words that we have seen together, you will be able to follow this presidential election.

I'm showing you the book that inspired this video. Kill the French and in particular the story number 34 which speaks about politics and a speech.

This book is very interesting if you speak English, it will allow you to build on the words you understand easily to integrate more complicated words.

And you see at the end of each story, there is also a tip to progress in French. I really like this book because I think it's great for boosting your confidence and especially your confidence in your ability to progress in French.

In the description of the video, I give you the link to find this book on Amazon.

Before you leave, don't forget to support me by liking this video. And most importantly, if you're new, subscribe so you don't miss any of my videos.

See you soon.