Pro-European centrist Macron and anti-immigration candidate Le Pen have offered starkly different visions for France during a campaign that has been closely watched in Europe and the rest of the world.
At the end of a battle that has increased in intensity in the final days, Macron visited Rodez in the south while Le Pen was heckled in Reims.
Anti-racism protesters hurled objects at Le Pen and ally Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and shouted “Marine, give back the money!” as they left the cathedral in the northern city.
She and her National Front (FN) party are being targeted by several investigations, including one into misuse of expenses in the European Parliament.
Reims is deeply intertwined with French history and Joan of Arc – a nationalist symbol adopted by the FN.
“Mr Macron’s supporters behave violently, even at Reims cathedral, a symbolic and sacred place. No dignity,” Le Pen wrote on Twitter.
Polls showed that 39-year-old former investment banker Macron has stretched his lead over Le Pen to 22 points after he was seen to have emerged the strongest from a bad-tempered TV debate on Wednesday.
Macron said he had already chosen the name of his future prime minister – but even the person concerned had not been informed.
“Yes, this choice has been made ‘in petto’,” he told Europe 1 radio, using an Italian expression meaning “in my heart”.
Macron said he would only announce his choice after he took over from President Francois Hollande, if he wins.
“I will not announce it before,” he said.
Le Pen has said she would appoint Dupont-Aignan – a eurosceptic who was knocked out in the first round of the presidential election – as her premier if she becomes president.
In a major security breach, Greenpeace activists partially scaled the Eiffel Tower to hang a giant anti-Le Pen banner saying “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and “#resist”.
The activists hung the banner from an arch connecting two legs of the iconic 324m (1,063’) “Iron Lady”, a symbol of Paris.
Twelve people were arrested over the stunt in which a safety net was also damaged.
The Paris police department said yesterday’s early-morning protest had exposed “flaws” in the security surrounding the world-renowned monument.
City and police officials announced immediate measures to reinforce patrols at the site, and plans to re-evaluate a video surveillance system.
The Paris city hall denounced the Greenpeace action.
“It is unacceptable that a monument like the Eiffel Tower, the emblem of Paris for Parisians and for all French people, should be used for political ends,” the mayor’s office said in a joint statement with the police.
Police boosted patrols around the Eiffel Tower along with dog teams after the protest.
Security numbers will also be boosted at the tower’s supervision centre and video monitoring will be reviewed.
Paris officials announced in February plans to protect visitors by erecting bulletproof glass walls at the northern and southern ends of the monument area.
The glass walls are intended to prevent individuals or vehicles from breaching the site.
The Eiffel Tower is visited by 6mn people each year, making it the world’s most-visited paying monument.
Greenpeace France head Jean-Francois Julliard told reporters the protest was intended as “a warning against Marine Le Pen’s programme and the dangers it poses for NGOs and others”.
“Liberty, equality, fraternity: it is vital to defend these values which are particularly threatened by the National Front,” Julliard said, referring to Le Pen’s party.
Julliard said Greenpeace was concerned about the “resurgence of nationalism” around the world, citing Turkey and Hungary as examples of countries where the right to protest had been curtailed.
Defending basic rights “is critical to continuing our environmental struggle”, he added.
In 2013, a Greenpeace activist spent hours suspended from the tower to protest against the imprisonment of 30 Russian militants after an operation on an oil platform.
Security jitters were also raised when a radicalised former soldier was arrested near an army base in Evreux, north of Paris, and weapons including a shotgun were found stashed nearby.
“A shotgun, two black powder revolvers and bullets” were discovered near the air base near Paris, where the 34-year-old was taken into custody, a source said.
Police found a car belonging to the man, who is on a French watchlist of extremists, near the base in Evreux.
He was arrested a few hours later in the same area.
Paris anti-terror prosecutors are investigating, but it is not clear why the suspect was near the base.
It came at the end of a campaign in which Le Pen has tried to portray Macron as being soft on Islamic fundamentalism, playing to the concerns of many of her supporters after a string of terror attacks in France that have killed more than 230 people since 2015.
Le Pen sees her rise as the consequence of growing right-wing nationalism and a backlash against globalisation reflected in the election of Donald Trump in the US and Britain’s shock vote to leave the European Union.
She has said she wants to copy Britain’s example of holding a referendum on France’s EU membership, sending alarm bells ringing across the bloc.
She has sought to soften the image of her National Front party over the past six years – but without fully banishing doubts about the party’s core beliefs.
Macron’s campaign team said rumours that he has an offshore account in the Bahamas – which he strongly denies – were spread on Twitter by accounts close to Kremlin-friendly news sites like Sputnik and RT as well as Trump supporters.
Le Pen repeated the rumours in the TV debate.
Macron’s team called it a “textbook case” of “fake news” and has filed a legal complaint and threatened to sue anyone who repeats the claim.
Prosecutors are investigating.
Macron won backing from former US president Barack Obama on Thursday, who said in a video posted on the candidate’s website that he “appeals to people’s hopes and not their fears”.
In the first round of the election on April 23, Macron scored 24% with Le Pen second on 21.3%.
The bruising contest has seen the main left and right-wing forces in French politics sidelined, as candidates from outside the mainstream parties have profited.
