As France's most crucial election in decades entered its final week French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, taking a Euroskeptic stance, warned the E.U. must change or it could face Frexit.
"I'm a pro-European, I defended constantly during this election the European idea and European policies because I believe it's extremely important for French people and for the place of our country in globalization," Macron told the BBC.
"But at the same time we have to face the situation, to listen to our people, and to listen to the fact that they are extremely angry today, impatient and the dysfunction of the EU is no more sustainable," he said.
"So I do consider that my mandate, the day after, will be at the same time to reform in depth the European Union and our European project."
France's election is drawing attention across the European Union just as the bloc is negotiating Britain's departure. Le Pen's anti-EU stance could unravel post-war unity, while Macron wants greater European cooperation and trade.
Le Pen wants a referendum on France's membership in the EU, to restore French borders and return to the franc currency instead of the euro.
"I think the euro is dead," Le Pen was quoted as saying in Sunday's Le Parisien.
Le Pen, who has campaigned to pull France out of the single currency Eurozone, said she would introduce a "new currency" if she wins on May 7. But she made the distinction between a new currency for daily use and the euro that she said would be retained for "large companies who trade internationally".
Macron sought for a third successive day to paint National Front (FN) leader Le Pen as an extremist, while she portrayed him as a clone of unpopular outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande, under whom he served as economy minister from 2014 to 2106.
The latest opinion poll showed Macron leading Le Pen by 61 percent to 39 ahead of Sunday's election, which offers France a choice between his vision of closer integration with a modernized European Union and her calls to cut immigration and take the country out of the euro.
The bitterly contested election has polarized France, exposing some of the same sense of anger with globalization and political elites that brought Donald Trump to presidential power in the United States, and caused Britons to vote for a divorce from the EU.
The vote in the world's fifth largest economy, a key member of the NATO defense alliance, will be the first to elect a president who is from neither of the main political groupings: the candidates of the Socialists and conservative party The Republicans were knocked out in the first round on April 23. Between them Le Pen and Macron gathered only 45 percent of votes in that round, which eliminated nine other candidates.
