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French President Emmanuel Macron is comfortably ahead in the polls for the first round of France\\u2019s presidential election, which takes place Sunday. With far-right candidate Marine Le Pen likely to finish second, the second-round runoff is shaping up to be a repeat of 2017.

But while Macron won in a landslide in 2017 with more than 60 percent of the vote, this time the gap is much narrower, with less than 10 percent separating Macron and Le Pen in opinion polls and the momentum clearly in Le Pen\\u2019s favor.

Macron came into office on an ambitious and popular foreign policy agenda that portrayed the European Union not as a problem, but as a solution, particularly to the pressures the country faces as a result of globalization. But Macron has often struggled to communicate his vision to the French electorate, even as he suffers from his image of being detached from the population\\u2019s everyday problems, especially the spiraling cost of living.

On this week\\u2019s episode of Trend Lines, C\\xe9lia Belin, a visiting fellow in the Brookings Institution\\u2019s Center on the United States and Europe, joins Peter D\\xf6rrie to discuss how foreign policy is intersecting with electoral politics in France\\u2019s presidential election, and what a possible second term for Macron\\u2014or a first term for Le Pen\\u2014might look like.

Relevant articles:

Monsieur Fixit

The Making of Macron\\u2019s Worldview

For Macron, Being Right on European Strategic Autonomy Isn\\u2019t Enough

France\\u2019s Security Law Debacle Shows the Dangers of Macron\\u2019s \\u2018Le Pen-Lite\\u2019 Agenda

Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter D\\xf6rrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. \\xa0

To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com\\xa0.