French election: Emmanuel Macron wins presidency by decisive margin - The Guardian

French presidential election 2017

The pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidency in a decisive victory over the far-right Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, and vowed to unite a divided and fractured France.

Macron, 39, a former economy minister who ran as a “neither left nor right” independent promising to shake up the French political system, took 65.1% to Le Pen’s 34.9%, according to initial projections from early counts.

His victory was hailed by his supporters as holding back a tide of populism after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the US election.

Addressing thousands of supporters in the grand courtyard of the Louvre, the vast Paris palace-turned-museum, Macron said he would defend France and Europe. He said Europe and the world are “watching us” and “waiting for us to defend the spirit of the Enlightenment, threatened in so many places”.

He promised to unite a divided and fractured France, saying: “I will do everything to make sure you never have reason again to vote for extremes.”

Speaking of his meteoric rise and victory that was not forecast even a year ago, he said: “Everyone said it was impossible. But they didn’t know France!”

Despite the wide margin of the final result, Le Pen’s score nonetheless marked a historic high for the French far right. Even after a lacklustre campaign that ended with a calamitous performance in the final TV debate, she was projected to have taken almost 11m votes, double that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he reached the presidential run-off in 2002. The anti-immigration, anti-EU Front National’s supporters asserted that the party had a central place as an opposition force in France.

In Brussels and Berlin, there was relief that Le Pen’s anti-EU, anti-globalisation programme was defeated.

A spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said it was a “victory for a strong and united Europe” while the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said French voters had chosen a “European future”.

The office of the British prime minister, Theresa May, said she “warmly congratulates” Macron on his victory and “we look forward to working with the new president on a wide range of shared priorities”.

Trump, who will meet Macron on 25 May at the Nato summit in Brussels, tweeted: “Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron on his big win today as the next president of France. I look very much forward to working with him!” Earlier in the campaign, he had declared Le Pen the strongest candidate. - Read More

French election: Emmanuel Macron wins presidency by decisive margin

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