According to opinion polls, Nicolas. Sarkozy has a four- or five-point lead in comparison with his opponent. Nevertheless, both of the candidates were very careful expressing their political points of view, as they realized that millions of people were watching and analysing each and every word they said.

Obviously, sometimes it was difficult for Ms Royal to control her emotions. When they were discussing the question of handicapped students Segolene Royal became too aggressive towards Nicolas Sarkozy because of the disagreements and opposite approaches. Royal accused him of "political immorality". Besides, she said that her opponent was a member of the government in power for the past five years and is responsible for the mistakes of that government.

Mr. Sarkozy once even said: "Calm down ... I don't know why the usually calm Madame Royal has lost her nerve."

As soon as the debate was over Sarkozy hurried to announce that the debate would not have any impact on the results of the elections. Later he said that he did not expect aggressiveness from Socialist opponent.

During all the debate, Ms Royal aimed to win over to her side the small proportion of centrist voters (about 7 million voters), those who voted for Francois Bayrou (a candidate who participated in the first election and defeated).

Though the questions of the Foreign policy were not discussed much, the opponents touched upon the question of Turkey`s entry to the EU. Concerning this question, Sarkozy was more conservative by opposing it, unlike Royal. That is to say Sarkozy`s policy concerning this question is the same as the policy of acting government and president Jaques Chiraques.

Mostly, they were disputing over the chronic unemployment, crime, problems of young generation, public health and pension systems. They paid attention also to France`s public debt, at the same time without proposing concrete solutions.

The two candidates started out with radically different prescriptions for how to invigorate the economy. Nicolas Sarkozy accentuated the necessity of making people work more and cutting taxes. Segolene Royal, on the contrary, insisted on increasing in the minimum wage, pensions and other benefits. She proposed to stimulate growth by increasing purchasing power.

In some political scientists` opinion, Sarkozy will probably manage to rebuild French economy, as the methods he suggests are quite realistic, while judging from what Ms Royal suggests, France will stay in stagnation at least during coming 5 years.

Another important thing is that the majority of voters continue to prefer Nicolas Sarkozy after the debate too, as according to an Opinionway poll of Le Figaro 53% of viewers judged Sarkozy more convincing in against 31% for Royal.

After hearing the results of the poll, Nicolas Sarkozy said that he did not expect the debate to have an impact on people's opinion, but in fact it did.

Anyway, whoever becomes the president of France he/she will inherit an economy with a number of basic problems, like chronic unemployment and public debt etc.

Nowadays, the percentage of unemployment in France is 8.8 percent which, in fact, is higher then in almost every European Union country and the gross domestic product grew by only 2 percent last year which is also not very promising index. This is the reason why new president and new government should have a concrete program of economic development and also concrete ways of achieving the goals in the most efficient way. - By Narek Abrahamyan for HULIQ.com