A French Presidential candidate has publicly apologised after his party tweeted a caricature of a rival, admitting that the image had antisemitic overtones.

Francois Fillon, Presidential candidate for Les Républicains, issued a statement in which he referred to the “unacceptable caricature”, which was issued from the right-wing party’s official Twitter account on Friday.

The picture showed Emmanuel Macron with a top hat and hooked nose, and cutting a cigar with a red sickle, a Communist symbol. Mr Macron, an independent centrist candidate, is currently ahead of Mr Fillon in the polls. He is not Jewish, but previously worked as an investment banker for the Rothschild Banking Group.

The tweet was deleted a few hours after it was uploaded, but not before it received online criticism.

Raphaël Glucksmann, a prominent French essayist, tweeted the image, saying: “They’ve reached this point ... hooked nose, the alliance of capitalism and the Bolsheviks (the red sickle and the cigar) ... Even the [far-right] Front National wouldn’t dare.”

Benjamin Griveaux, a spokesperson for Mr Macron, told AFP: “The use of terms and imagery that draw on antisemitic fantasy is extremely worrying for the quality of debate in the republic but also for the state of mind that prevails in certain [party] headquarters.”

References were made to the images' similarity to those used during the 1940's, when a French Vichy government, operating under the aegis of the Nazis, regularly released antisemitic propaganda. 

On Saturday evening, Mr Fillon released a public statement condemning the incident and saying: “I cannot tolerate my party publishing caricatures that use the codes of antisemitic propaganda. I understand the anxiety this could have caused because it evokes the drawings of a dark period of our history and conveys an ideology I have always fought against.

“The political battle is tough, but it must stay dignified.”