Paris, April 24 (BNA) French President Emmanuel Macron defeated his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Sunday by a comfortable margin, securing a second term and avoiding what could have been a political earthquake.
There were shouts of joy when the results appeared on a giant screen in the Champ de Mars park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where Macron supporters waved the flags of France and the European Union. People hugged, danced and chanted “Macron!”.
European leaders also welcomed the news that a pro-EU Macron rather than the hardline EU nationalist Le Pen has welcomed, Reuters reported.
Opinion polls expected Macron to receive 58.5% of the vote. These estimates are usually accurate but may adjust when official results come out.
“I feel very comfortable,” Alessandro Ballini, 42, told Reuters at Macron’s rally. “It seemed very close and populism was at our door.” But he stressed that the president faces a difficult task given the number of far-right votes.
Le Pen, who at one point succeeded Macron by a few points in the polls, quickly conceded defeat but vowed to keep fighting as parliamentary elections approached in June.
“I will never abandon the French,” she told her supporters, chanting, “Marin! Marine!”
Macron can expect little or no grace after many, especially from the left, voted only in his favour, reluctantly to prevent the far right from winning. Protests that marred part of his first term could erupt again very quickly, as he tries to press ahead with pro-business reforms.
“We will not spoil the victory … but the (Le Pen) national rally scored the highest result ever,” Health Minister Olivier Veran told BFM TV.
“There will be continuity in the government’s policy because the president has been re-elected. But we have also heard the message of the French people,” he added, pledging for change.
The nature of Macron’s second term will be strongly influenced by the results of the parliamentary elections in June. Le Pen said she aims for strong unity in parliament while hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon has said he wants to be prime minister, something that would force Macron into an embarrassing, recession-prone “coexistence”.
Philippe Lagro, 63, artistic director of a Paris theater, said earlier in the day that he voted for Macron after voting for Mélenchon in the first round.
He said he would vote for Melenchon again in June. “Prime Minister Melenchon. That would be fun. Macron would be upset, but that’s the point.”
Allies immediately hailed Macron’s victory on Sunday as a reprieve to mainstream politics that has been shaken in recent years by Brexit, the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the rise of a new generation of nationalist leaders.
“Bravo Emmanuel,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote on Twitter. “In this turbulent period, we need a strong Europe and France fully committed to a more sovereign and strategic European Union.”
“Financial markets will breathe a collective sigh of relief after Macron’s election victory,” said Sima Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors.
‘shocked’
Macron will join a small club – only two French presidents before him managed to get a second term. But his victory margin appears narrower than when he beat Le Pen for the first time in 2017, underlining the number of French still unimpressed by him and his domestic record.
That disappointment was reflected in turnout numbers, with France’s major polling institutes saying the abstention rate was likely to stabilize around 28%, the highest since 1969.
Le Pen’s campaign has highlighted the high cost of living and Macron’s sometimes tough style as his weakest points.
It promised steep fuel tax cuts, a zero percent sales tax on essentials from pasta to nappies, income waivers for young workers, and a “first French” stance on jobs and welfare.
“I was shocked to see that the majority of French people wanted to re-elect a president who had looked down on them for five years,” Adrien Caligiuri, a 27-year-old project, told Le Pen’s rally.
Meanwhile, Macron has insisted that Le Pen still has plans to withdraw France from the European Union – which she denies. Read more
In the latter part of the campaign when he sought the support of left-leaning voters, Macron played down an earlier promise to make the French work longer, saying he was open to discussing plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65.
In the end, as viewer polls showed after last week’s televised debate between the two, Le Pen’s policies – which included a proposal to ban people from wearing the Islamic headscarf in public – remained too extreme for many French.