Malos augurios para la economía francesa a solo seis meses de las elecciones presidenciales. El PIB retrocedió un 0,1% en el tercer trimestre del año, según las primeras estimaciones publicadas este viernes por la oficina nacional de estadísticas (Insee). El Gobierno contaba con un ligero avance entre julio y septiembre, así que el dato complica aún más la frágil situación económica del país en una coyuntura difícil: justo cuando se están debatiendo en la Asamblea los presupuestos del año que viene, con importantes recortes y en medio de fuertes movilizaciones en las calles contra los ajustes y el declive de los servicios públicos.

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Infighting has broken out among centrist candidates for France’s presidential race, splitting the mainstream vote and making a runoff between far-right Marine Le Pen and hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon more likely.

Opinion polls before next April’s presidential election show Le Pen is nearly certain to qualify for a second-round runoff in May and that Melenchon is consistently nudging ahead of mainstream candidates.

Centre-right Edouard Philippe, President Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister, has so far been the centre’s torchbearer.

Philippe struggles to connect with voters

But Philippe’s lacklustre campaign, voter weariness near the end of Macron’s two terms, an explosive social and security context and the challenges he faces from within his own camp have hurt his polling, people in Macron’s camp and political analysts say.

“There’s panic on board because there was no scenario planned for this. They hadn’t anticipated the cataclysm under way,” said Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, a political communications specialist at Sciences Po.

Philippe has also faced criticism over several awkward interventions — including suggesting in a podcast that ideally a newly elected president should have three months to rest before taking office — and political analysts say he is struggling to connect with voters at a time of rising political tensions.

“The terrible thing is that he isn’t cutting through,” Moreau-Chevrolet told Reuters. “They didn’t understand that you have to campaign. There’s a kind of dilettantism.”

Rivalry between former prime ministers intensifies

The anxiety has sharpened tensions between Philippe and his main rival, Gabriel Attal, another former prime minister. They are locked in a battle over who should step aside for the centrist ticket.

Philippe fell to 15% support in an IFOP-Fiducial poll for Le Figaro newspaper, a six-point drop since September. That is below the 16.5% for Melenchon, who would have enough to qualify for a runoff against Le Pen.

Attal stood at 13%, behind Melenchon and Raphael Glucksmann, a mainstream centre-left candidate.

Under pressure from lawmakers in his camp to abandon his presidential ambitions and rally to Philippe, Attal irritated many Macron allies this week by reviving the idea of a broad centrist primary, a proposal critics say risks fuelling division at a time when moderates can least afford it.

Still, Attal has leverage. As leader of Macron’s Renaissance party, he controls the purse strings of the party machine.

Polls expose divisions within French centre

“It’s catastrophic,” said Jean-Baptiste Moreau, a former lawmaker from Macron’s camp.

“They are attacking one another in the media and they are both collapsing in the polls. We’re heading straight towards an RN-LFI second round,” he said of Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Melenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI). “In the current state of opinion, I don’t see how we avoid it.”

The fragmentation stretches beyond the Philippe-Attal feud.

On the centre-left, Glucksmann has gained ground after winning the Socialist primary. On the right, Bruno Retailleau, a former interior minister, and David Lisnard, the free-market mayor of Cannes, are targeting the same moderate electorate.

Philippe’s supporters say reports of his demise are premature. Laurent Marcangeli, a member of Philippe’s party Horizons, acknowledged recent polling setbacks but said the former prime minister remained the only centrist candidate with a realistic path to the runoff.

“He’s still in the race for the second round and to prevent a Le Pen-Melenchon duel,” said Marcangeli, adding that in some polls Attal scored as low as single digits.

Moderates face pressure to unite

Some Macron allies, however, are openly questioning whether either man should carry on. They say any association with Macron, who is finishing his second term at record-low popularity, will weigh on a centrist candidate.

“The two of them are collapsing,” said Perrine Goulet, a lawmaker from Macron ally MoDem. “Any candidate who has been in a Macron government is going to be struggling.”

With Le Pen and Melenchon consolidating support at opposite ends of the spectrum, she said moderates needed to put aside personal ambitions and rally behind a single contender able to unite supporters of Glucksmann through to Retailleau.

“We’re calling on everyone to put their egos aside and find the best candidate,” Goulet said.

“If we keep Glucksmann on one side, Retailleau on the other, Edouard Philippe, Gabriel Attal, we’ll end up with an LFI-RN second round. The danger is simply too great.”

EU council president calls deadly strike ‘cruel and devastating’; fragile ceasefire holds in Oleshky. What we know on day 1,710

European leaders have reacted with outrage to a deadly attack by a Russian drone that slammed into a busy railway platform in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Ukraine had intelligence about more ballistic missile strikes to come. French President Emmanuel Macron stressed the need for “far more than a localised ceasefire”, referencing the current truce in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. The EU council president, António Costa, who described the Dnipro attacks as “cruel and devastating”, called for greater pressure on Russia after the latest strikes against civilians. “The EU will continue to increase the pressure on Russia and to support Ukraine until a just and lasting peace is achieved,” he added. “We call on all our international partners to do the same.”

Later on Thursday, Russian forces ⁠launched ⁠an attack ​on the ⁠Ukrainian capital ⁠Kyiv ​with ‌ballistic ‌missiles, Mayor Vitali Klitschko ‌said on Telegram, hitting warehouses and ‌triggering a fire. Emergency services were headed to ​the scene on the east side ⁠of the Dnipro ​River, he said.

Describing the Dnipro train station attack – which killed at least 14 people and injured another 14 – as “horrific”, the president of Ukraine insisted “sanctions against Moscow and its war machine must not be eased for as long as this Russian war continues”. Zelenskyy warned also that Ukraine had intelligence about preparations by the Russians of new ballistic missile strikes. “We need the means to take out all this Russian ‌evil. We are expecting relevant decisions,” he said. Another attack on Dnipro hit a student dormitory, setting it ablaze, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said, adding the assaults had cut power to 350,000 households.

The strikes came as Ukraine and Russia kept to a fragile local ceasefire in the ravaged city of Oleshky and prepared to send a humanitarian convoy to the southern Ukrainian city under Russian occupation since 2022 and where residents have faced months of food, water and medicine shortages. Russia’s human ‌rights commissioner Yana Lantratova ‌said on Friday that local residents had until 2 pm local time (1100 ​GMT) on 30 October to evacuate, Russian news agency Interfax reported. Two ​people, ​including one ​sapper, were killed ​while ‌de-mining in ​Oleshky, ​she said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military ⁠has paused its strikes on Russian oil refineries after pressure from US President Donald Trump, ⁠according to a report in the Wall Street ⁠Journal ​on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the operations. Ukrainian units carrying out ⁠long-range strikes were told in mid-October that the campaign against refineries was effectively on hold once ⁠missions already in motion were completed, the Journal reported. The ​unofficial pause is expected ‌to last until ‌after the US midterm elections and potentially deeper into ‌November, the newspaper said.

After the Dnipro attack, Zelenskyy renewed his criticism of a deal struck between Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to ease some US sanctions on Russia allowing Moscow to release diesel on to global markets. “How many such terrorist strikes has Russia carried out against our people since sanctions were lifted on some Russian oligarchs and the energy sector, instead of de-escalating?” he asked.

Late on Thursday, Putin said he supported any steps aimed at restoring relations with ⁠European countries, saying the outbreak of any conflict would leave ⁠a situation with ⁠no ​winners. Commenting on his phone call this week with the leaders of Norway and Finland, Putin told reporters after ‌hosting a summit with African ‌leaders: “And if anyone wants it, let them prepare, but right now they have not achieved their goal – to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. And if things go too far, there will be no winners at all. .”