Macron wins presidency with 65 per cent vote

PARIS: Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron won France’s landmark presidential election, first estimates showed Sunday, heading off a fierce challenge from the far-right in a pivotal vote for the future of the divided country and Europe.

The victory caps an extraordinary rise for the 39-year-old former investment banker, who will become the country’s youngest-ever leader.

He has promised to heal a fractured and demoralised country after a vicious campaign that has exposed deep economic and social divisions, as well as tensions around identity and immigration.

Initial estimates showed Macron winning between 65.5 per cent and 66.1 per cent of ballots ahead of Le Pen on between 33.9 per cent and 34.5 per cent.

Unknown three years ago, Macron is now poised to become one of Europe’s most powerful leaders, bringing with him a hugely ambitious agenda of political and economic reform for France and the European Union.

The result will resonate worldwide and particularly in Brussels and Berlin where leaders will breathe a sigh of relief that Le Pen’s anti-EU, antiglobalisation programme has been defeated.

After Britain’s vote last year to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s victory in the US, the French election had been widely watched as a test of how high a tide of right-wing nationalism would rise.

Le Pen, 48, had portrayed the ballot as a contest between Macron and the “globalists” -- in favour of open trade, immigration and shared sovereignty -- and her “patriotic” vision of strong borders and national identities.

Outgoing President Francois Hollande, who plucked Macron from obscurity to name him minister in 2014, said voting “is always an important, significant act, heavy with consequences” as he cast his vote.

Macron will now face huge challenges as he attempts to enact his domestic agenda of cutting state spending, easing labour laws, boosting education in deprived areas and extending new protections to the selfemployed.

The philosophy and literature lover is inexperienced, has no political party and must try to fashion a working parliamentary majority after legislative elections next month.

— AFP — AFP People queue before voting at a polling station in Solesmes, northwestern France, during the second round of the French presidential election. A voter casts a ballot in Quirbajou, southern France, during the second round of the French presidential...

— AFP — AFP Police officers patrol in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris, following an evacuation due to a security alert, during the second round of voting for the French presidential election. Outgoing French president Francois Hollande poses for a selfie after...

— AFP French presidential election candidate for the En Marche! movement Emmanuel Macron casts his ballot at a polling station in Le Touquet, northern France, during the second round of the French presidential election.