Macron faces difficult next step
New French president must secure parliamentary majority in June elections
PARIS — Freshly elected to the French presidency, Emmanuel Macron now faces an equally difficult Act II: securing the parliamentary majority he needs to make good on his campaign promises to lift France out of economic gloom.
With legislative elections just five weeks away, the startup political movement the 39-year-old former investment banker launched one year ago on his meteoric ride to become France’s youngest president lost no time Monday in girding for the crucial mid-June election battle.
After winning the French presidency from perhaps the most precarious place possible — the center — Mr. Macron now has to figure out how to govern from there.
Without a working majority, Mr. Macron could quickly become a lame-duck president, unable to push through labor overhauls and other measures he promised to the broadly disgruntled electorate — shown by a record result for his defeated far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, and a record number of blank and spoiled ballots in Sunday’s runoff vote.
The transfer of power to Mr. Macron will take place next Sunday, outgoing President Francois Hollande announced. Mr. Macron is already looking the part. He shed his breezier campaign demeanor for a solemn, more statesman-like look in his first appearances after his victory and again Monday, at a sober ceremony with Mr. Hollande to commemorate Germany’s defeat in World War II.
The pomp of the ceremony, at the imposing Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris, was seen as immediately helping to lend a presidential air to the previously untested leader who fought and won his first election.
It was the first time Mr. Hollande and Mr. Macron appeared together in public since August 2016. That was when Mr. Macron resigned as Mr. Hollande’s economy minister to embark on his risky presidential run as an independent — a decision received coldly by the French leader at the time.
On Monday, though, Mr. Hollande gripped Mr. Macron’s arm before the two men walked side by side. The ceremony marked decades of peace in Western Europe, something Mr. Macron made a cornerstone of his campaign against Ms. Le Pen’s brand of nationalist populism.
Also, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Mr. Macron on Sunday on his win, and the White House said the two talked by phone on Monday, agreeing to meet on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels later this month.
Elsewhere, the official tone from the Kremlin on Monday was that Russia can work with anybody. But the snow falling on Moscow was viewed as perhaps more reflective of the damp chill in the Kremlin’s relations with Europe after yet another fruitless attempt to influence an election abroad. (The Macron campaign claims that Russia had hacked its computers.)
Mr. Macron is already preparing his first days in power. Sylvie Goulard, a French deputy to the European Parliament, said Mr. Macron would make Berlin his first official visit.
Mr. Macron will name his prime minister next week, but could be forced to amend his choice if the legislative elections don’t go to plan.
Meanwhile, a protest Monday in Paris against Mr. Macron’s planned overhauls drew several thousand people. There were brief clashes with police and several arrests.