Macron, Le Pen face off in final French presidential debate

French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face off in a potentially decisive televised debate on Wednesday ahead of this Sunday’s runoff vote.

Opinion polls still show pro-European former economy minister Macron, 39, holding a strong lead of 20 points over the National Front's Le Pen, 48, in what is widely seen as France's most important election in decades.

Their starkly different views of Europe, immigration, the economy and French identity will be explored for the first time face-to-face following a week marked by bruising clashes between them.

Voters are choosing between Macron, who wants to cut state regulations in the economy while protecting workers, and Le Pen, a eurosceptic who wants to ditch the Euro currency and impose sharp curbs on immigration.

Macron finished only three points ahead of Le Pen in the first round on April 23, but he is widely expected now to pick the bulk of votes from the Socialists and the centre-right whose candidates were eliminated.

"Our goal is to avoid being dragged into mud-slinging," an aide to Macron told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity ahead of the two hours and 20 minutes of exchanges between the candidates.

Macron warned he would not pull his punches in Wednesday night's televised encounter against a rival whose policies he says are dangerous for France.

"I am not going to employ invective. I am not going to use clichés or insults. I'll use hand-to-hand fighting to demonstrate that her ideas represent false solutions," he told BFM TV.

Le Pen, who portrays Macron as a candidate of high finance masquerading as a liberal, said: "I shall be defending my ideas. He will be defending the posture that he has adopted."

"His program seems to be very vague, but in reality it is a simple continuation of (Socialist President) Francois Hollande's government," she said in an interview with Reuters news agency on Tuesday.