President-elect takes first steps in power change
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-yearold former investment banker began 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.
Without a working majority, Macron could quickly become a lame-duck president, unable to push through labor reforms and other measures he promised to the broadly disgruntled electorate.
The transfer of power to Macron will take place Sunday, outgoing President Francois Hollande announced. 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 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, immediately helped lend a presidential air to the previously untested leader who fought and won his first election.
It was the first time Hollande and Macron appeared together in public since August. That was when Macron resigned as 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, Hollande gripped Macron’s arm before the two men walked side by side. The ceremony marked decades of peace in Western Europe, something Macron made a cornerstone of his campaign against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen’s brand of nationalist populism. Le Pen campaigned for France to leave the 28-nation European Union and drop the shared euro currency in favor of reinstating a new French franc.
Yet to move into the presidential palace, Macron is already preparing for his first days in power. Sylvie Goulard, a French deputy to the European Parliament, said Macron would make Berlin his first official visit, with perhaps a stop to see French troops stationed abroad as well.
Macron’s optimistically named “En Marche!” — “On the Move” — political movement plans to field candidates for all 577 National Assembly seats. But it will be contesting its first ever election. As part of his effort to convince voters that both he and his movement marked a break with the status quo, Macron previously promised that half of its candidates will be new to elected politics. That means many of them may be burdened by the handicap of being largely unknown to voters in constituencies they compete for.
Mainstream parties on the left and right that were frozen out of Sunday’s runoff in a first for modern France, also are regrouping, aiming to clip Macron’s wings and impose their political agenda via parliament.