As French voters weigh up their options ahead of the April presidential election, FRANCE 24 explores eight major campaign themes – from healthcare and culture, to insecurity and the economy. We criss-cross the country in a 100% electric replica of Citroën's 2 CV model. Our journey takes us north, southeast and west – west enough to include the French overseas department of Guadeloupe. Every week, we stop off at a new destination.

“Our hospitals rose to the challenge of this crisis, in the end we were able to take in all the patients we were asked to. We looked after Covid patients, but also other patients. But you can’t come out of a crisis like that unscathed.”
– Professor Emmanuel Andrès, President of the Strasbourg University Hospitals Medical Council

For more than two years, French public debate has been dominated by talk of Covid-19 infection rates, vaccines and ICU occupancy, catapulting health care to the top of voters’ list of priorities. We kick off our road trip in Strasbourg in the east of France. In the early months of the pandemic, the region was the first to see an explosion of infections, and suffered one of the country’s worst death tolls. The French tend to be proud of their healthcare system. But with hospital budgets – not to mention doctors and nurses – stretched to their breaking points, voters are looking for assurances that their health will be in safe hands.

“To help banish that self-censorship, people coming to the city’s northern neighbourhoods from outside need to be telling the people and charities here that what they have is exciting, that it’s of value. They need to make it clear that their intention is to build something with these people.”
– Salim Grabsi, social activist and member of the ‘Sel de la vie’ (Salt of the earth) charity

It’s no secret: Literature, cinema, drama, music and art hold a special place in the French psyche. The cultural sector indirectly employs around 1.3 million people, generating €47 billion for the economy – that’s seven times more than the French car industry! But what does the future of culture look like after successive months of closed theatres, cinemas and galleries? And just how equal is access to that culture across different socioeconomic and cultural groups? Our journey this week takes us to Marseille. The city’s northern neighbourhoods are notoriously neglected, but they’re also a vibrant melting pot of a wide range of cultural influences.

“Rail networks in rural areas are underdeveloped and that’s a real problem for us. As part of the green transition, we’re all meant to be using our cars less and less, and using public transport more and more. But we just don’t have that here, what we have now simply isn’t enough.”
– Eric Correia, President of the Greater Guéret area

France is a nation of city dwellers, but at least one in five voters lives in the countryside. As cities continue to swell, smaller French towns and villages increasingly find that the local public services they rely on are shutting down, with decent job opportunities often hard to come by. We take our 2CV to La Creuse in rural France to understand the social and economic challenges faced by voters who feel abandoned by the largely urban political class. But we also meet people who have got big ideas about how to rejuvenate their rural communities.

“We’ve published a survey that we update every seven days. This week 2.7 percent of candidates’ campaigning time was dedicated to questions about the environment. That doesn’t reflect how big an issue climate change is for French voters - and it certainly doesn’t reflect how urgently we need to implement change. We have less than 10 years to radically alter our current climate trajectory.”
– Justine Ripol, Campaign manager, Notre Affaire à Tous (Our Common Concern)

In 2015, world leaders converged on the French capital to sign a historic – and legally binding – climate agreement. But seven years on, it’s clear that the gap between France’s promises and its actions is widening. We head to Gironde on the French west coast where coastal erosion, turbocharged by extreme weather linked to climate change, is already transforming lives. We talk to an organisation determined to hold the government to account through the courts, and meet a seaside community that’s already having to adapt to a rapidly receding coastline.

“Between 2016 and 2017 Nantes witnessed a sharp spike in a type of criminality that we really hadn’t experienced before. We’re talking about all sorts of theft – stealing mobile phones, ripping off necklaces. And these thefts can be violent, especially late in the evening and at night.”
– Pascal Bolo, Deputy Head of Security at Nantes’ City Hall.

Over 80 percent of French voters say that security and crime will be key considerations when they cast their ballots in April. Marseille’s recent spike in violent, gang-related crime has garnered a lot of media attention, but it’s by no means the only city struggling with the problem. This week our road trip takes us to Nantes, in western France, where recent population growth has coincided with a spike in crime. Over the past year, arrests for delinquency in the city centre have risen by over a third. We meet local residents who have set up a night-time patrol in a bid to keep the streets safe.

“Not everyone gets the same opportunities to succeed. Our organisation, l’AFEV, does a lot of work to strengthen that link between communities and universities. And we’ve realised that a lot of young people from underprivileged areas simply don’t have access to further education. They don’t get to choose their path – it’s more like there’s a path imposed on them by the national education system.”
– Cédric Laigle, regional manager AFEV, tutoring and mentoring organisation, Hauts-de-France

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – or Freedom, Equality, Fraternity – is the motto of the French Republic, and adorns the entrance to every French public school. But when it comes to education, these lofty ideals are, according to some, increasingly under strain. Challenges include everything from a chronic lack of qualified teachers to high dropout rates, while more than 15 percent of 15-year-olds struggle with basic maths and comprehension skills, leading to reduced professional opportunities later down the line. This week we travel to Lille in the north of France, a city with one of the highest dropout rates in the country.

“We are a French overseas department, which is supposed to mean that Guadeloupians have exactly the same status as any other French person. But at the same time we live overseas, here in the Caribbean. We may want to be completely equal to other French citizens, but the reality is we don’t have easy access to running water, the reality is we have a much harder time accessing housing.”
– Dr Raphaël Lapin, lawyer and president of ‘Gwadloup An Mouvman

This week we’re waving goodbye to our trusty 2CV and taking to the air, heading almost 7,000 kilometres across the Atlantic to the Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe. Residents of Guadeloupe are of course French citizens and send representatives to parliament. But many Guadeloupeans are furious at what they see as entrenched mistreatment by authorities in Paris, citing everything from lower salaries and higher fuel prices than on the mainland, to crumbling infrastructure. Almost one in 20 French voters live in overseas France. How might their frustrations shape the outcome of the 2022 election?

“Nobody’s able to say for certain if the crisis is a thing of the past. But we are seeing that our clients are starting to come back. When we opened our doors again in September 2021 we had an amazing response. But then with the arrival of the Omicron variant we saw the number of bookings plummet. We had huge number of cancellations.”
– Isabelle Halin Tassone, director of operations at Maison Albar Hotels

The final stop on our 2022 election road trip brings us to the cobblestoned streets of the French capital, a city still feeling the effects of pandemic-linked restrictions and the near-obliteration of tourism that followed. In 2021 the economy grew by 7 percent – the biggest year-on-year jump for 52 years. But GDP is still 1.6 percent behind its pre-crisis level. Many of the Parisian businesses that managed to survive the past few difficult months say they’re not yet out of the woods, but we will also meet entrepreneurs who say they’re already adapting the way they work to stay competitive.