Valérie Pécresse rally focuses on immigration as threat from rivals grows

Les Republicains' presidential choice promises crackdown after defections to Macron and rise in far-right's polling

The rightwing French presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse vowed to crack down on immigration as she held her first big rally on Sunday amid competition from the growing far right and defections from her party to the centrist leader Emmanuel Macron.

There is no sovereignty without borders," Pecresse said on stage in Paris as more than 6,000 people waved French flags in support of the first female presidential candidate for Les Republicains, the traditional rightwing party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.