Paris - Emmanuel Macron was elected French
president on Sunday with a business-friendly vision of European
integration, defeating Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist
who threatened to take France out of the European Union.
The centrist's emphatic victory, which also smashed the
dominance of France’s mainstream parties, will bring huge relief
to European allies who had feared another populist upheaval to
follow Britain's vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump's election
as US president.
With virtually all votes counted, Macron had topped 66
percent against just under 34 percent for Le Pen - a gap wider
than the 20 or so percentage points that pre-election surveys
had suggested.
Even so, it was a record performance for the National Front,
a party whose anti-immigrant policies once made it a pariah, and
underlined the scale of the divisions that Macron must now try
to heal.
After winning the first round two weeks ago, Macron had been
accused of behaving as if he was already president; on Sunday
night, with victory finally sealed, he was much more solemn.
"I know the divisions in our nation, which have led some to
vote for the extremes. I respect them," Macron said in an
address at his campaign headquarters, shown live on television.
"I know the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that very many of
you have also expressed. It's my responsibility to hear them,"
he said. "I will work to recreate the link between Europe and
its peoples, between Europe and citizens."
Later he strode alone almost grimly through the courtyard of
the Louvre Palace in central Paris to the strains of the EU
anthem, Beethoven's Ode to Joy, not breaking into a smile until
he mounted the stage of his victory rally to the cheers of his
his partying supporters.
His immediate challenge will be to secure a majority in next
month's parliamentary election for a political movement that is
barely a year old, rebranded as La Republique En Marche ("Onward
the Republic"), in order to implement his programme.
French President-elect Emmanuel Macron holds hands with his wife Brigitte during a victory celebration outside the Louvre museum in Paris. Picture: Thibault Camus/AP
Outgoing president Francois Hollande, who brought Macron
into politics, said the result "confirms that a very large
majority of our fellow citizens wanted to unite around the
values of the Republic and show their attachment to the European
Union".
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission,
told Macron: "I am delighted that the ideas you defended of a
strong and progressive Europe, which protects all its citizens,
will be those that you will carry into your presidency".
Macron spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
with whom he hopes to revitalise the Franco-German axis at the
heart of the EU, saying he planned to visit Berlin shortly.
Trump also tweeted his congratulations on Macron's "big
win", saying he looked forward to working with him.
The euro currency, which had been rising for two
weeks as the prospect receded that France would elect an anti-EU
president, topped $1.10 in early Asian trading for the first
time since the US elections.
"Fading political risk in France adds to the chance that
euro zone economic growth can surprise to the upside this year,"
said Holger Schmieding, analyst at Berenberg Bank.
The 39-year-old former investment banker, who served for two
years as economy minister under Hollande but has never
previously held elected office, will become France's youngest
leader since Napoleon.
Le Pen, 48, said she had also offered her congratulations.
But she defiantly claimed the mantle of France's main opposition
in calling on "all patriots to join us" in constituting a "new
political force".
Her tally was almost double the score that her father
Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the
presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by
the conservative Jacques Chirac.
Her high-spending, anti-globalisation 'France-first'
policies may have unnerved financial markets but they appealed
to many poorer members of society against a background of high
unemployment, social tensions and security concerns.
Despite having served briefly in Hollande's deeply unpopular
Socialist government, Macron managed to portray himself as the
man to revive France's fortunes by recasting a political
landscape moulded by the left-right divisions of the last
century.
"I've liked his youth and his vision from the start," said
Katia Dieudonné, a 35-year-old immigrant from Haiti who brought
her two children to Macron's victory rally.
"He stands for the change I've wanted since I arrived in
France in 1985 - openness, diversity, without stigmatising
anyone ... I've voted for the left in the past and been
disappointed."
Macron's team successfully skirted several attempts to
derail his campaign - by hacking its communications and
distributing purportedly leaked documents - that were
reminiscent of the hacking of Democratic Party communications
during Hillary Clinton's U.S. election campaign.
Allegations by Macron's camp that a massive computer hack
had compromised emails added last-minute drama on Friday night,
just as official campaigning was ending.
Supporters of French independent centrist presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron kiss as they celebrate outside the Louvre museum in Paris, France. Picture: Thibault Camus
While Macron sees France's way forward in boosting the
competitiveness of an open economy, Le Pen wanted to shield
French workers by closing borders, quitting the EU's common
currency, the euro, radically loosening the bloc and scrapping
trade deals.
When he moves into the Elysee Palace after his inauguration
next weekend, Macron will become the eighth - and youngest -
president of France's Fifth Republic.
Opinion surveys taken before the second round suggest that
his fledgling movement, despite being barely a year old, has a
fighting chance of securing the majority he needs.
He plans to blend a big reduction in public spending and a
relaxation of labour laws with greater investment in training
and a gradual reform of the unwieldy pension system.
A European integrationist and pro-Nato, he is orthodox in
foreign and defence policy and shows no sign of wishing to
change France's traditional alliances or reshape its military
and peacekeeping roles in the Middle East and Africa.
His election also represents a long-awaited generational
change in French politics that have been dominated by the same
faces for years.
He will be the youngest leader in the current Group of Seven
(G7) major nations and has elicited comparisons with youthful
leaders past and present, from Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau to British ex-premier Tony Blair and even late US president John F Kennedy.
But any idea of a brave new political dawn will be tempered
by an abstention rate on Sunday of around 25 percent, the
highest this century, and by the blank or spoiled ballots
submitted by 12 percent of those who did vote.
Many of those will have been supporters of the far-left
maverick Jean-Luc Melenchon, whose high-spending, anti-EU,
anti-globalisation platform had many similarities with Le Pen's.
Melenchon took 19 percent in coming fourth in the first
round of the election, and pointedly refused to endorse Macron
for the runoff.
France's biggest labour union, the CFDT, welcomed Macron's
victory but said that the National Front's score was still
worryingly high.
"Now, all the anxieties expressed at the ballot by a part of
the electorate must be heard," it said in a statement. "The
feeling of being disenfranchised, of injustice, and even
abandonment is present among a large number of our citizens."
The more radical leftist CGT union called for a
demonstration on Monday against "liberal" economic policies.
Like Macron, Le Pen will now have to work to try to convert
her presidential result into parliamentary seats, in a two-round
system that has in the past encouraged voters to vote tactically
to keep her out.
She has worked for years to soften the xenophobic
associations that clung to the National Front under her father,
going so far as to expel him from the party he founded.
On Sunday night, her deputy Florian Philippot distanced the
movement even further from him by saying the new, reconstituted
party would not be called "National Front".