The European Union would not survive a win for National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has warned.
The EU, "weakened by Brexit, would not survive the new shock of an openly Europhobic government coming to power in France", Cazeneuve wrote in a column for Liberation.
The Socialist premier took aim at defeated leftist candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has refused to call on his more than seven million first-round voters to back centrist hopeful Emmanuel Macron against Le Pen in the run-off vote on Sunday.
"To Jean-Luc Melenchon and those following him or equivocating, I wish to say that there is still time to choose the Republic," Cazeneuve wrote.
His column came the morning after Macron launched an appeal to voters who disagree with his policies to back him for the sake of "free democracy".
In the past few days, Macron has visited Paris' Holocaust memorial and a village whose residents were massacred by German forces during World War II, warning on both occasions against forgetting the crimes of the past.
Le Pen, for her part, has intensified her attacks on Macron as the candidate of "high finance", playing on his four years working in the Rothschild bank as well as his pro-market economic policies.
Latest opinion polls show Macron winning the support of 59-61 per cent of likely voters.
