How liberal & open are French candidates?

In our analysis, instead of going into the specifics of each theme, we evaluate each candidate’s key proposals in three relevant pillars (public finance sustainability, structural reforms and Europe & openness) and build an Openness & Free- Market Index (Box1). This metric is certainly not flawless, but provides us with a market-friendly lens through which to read the various candidates’ programs.

Overall, our approach suggests that Fillon is the most economically liberal contender (from a domestic policy point of view), followed by Macron who ranks second in our index but offers the most open and pro-EU position among the candidates. Benoît Hamon is characterised by our metric as ‘conservative’. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have the lowest scores in our index (Exhibit 1).