Despite landslide victory, Macron has his work cut out for him

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday called Emmanuel Macron to congratulate him on his win after he surged to victory against Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections on Sunday.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement that while Macron’s election is “extremely encouraging”, his group is “concerned that a third of the French population voted for a risky political leader”.

And while a number of their leading figures rallied behind Macron, his “En Marche” movement, founded just a year ago, has never fought a legislative election.

Macron, after all, was barely seen as a credible candidate a year ago, not least because of the assumption that one of France’s main parties – nearly certainly the Republicans – would remain the primary challenge to Le Pen.

And a rebuke of the political establishment.

Europe has dodged a bullet, and the victory of Emmanuel Macron is, in the broader sense at least, a sign of the strength of the liberal status quo.

South Korea’s market was closed for its presidential election. “But for now those who support him are politicians who have been in the game for a while”, said Eddy Fougier, a researcher at the Institute for International Relations and Strategies.

Le Pen herself struggled in the final weeks of her campaign when she needed to bring her political experience to bear against the untested Macron, running in his first election of any kind.

She said she hoped and believed that cooperation with Macron would progress “in exactly this spirit”. Even nominally pro-E.U. leaders such as center-right Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte have more typically vowed to protect their citizens from European Union overreach – hardly a message that would rejuvenate the beleaguered bloc. Before the election, Nature polled thousands of French scientists and, of the 173 respondents, most supported Macron with “with nearly no support for Le Pen”, Nature reported April 20. Jean-Luc Mélenchon pinched many Socialist voters, particularly lower-income and unemployed urban dwellers, with his “France Insoumise” (France unbowed) platform; Macron won over the prosperous by coming out full-bore for Europe, globalization, economic reform, and immigration.

Macron would likely not even have made it to Sunday’s runoff but for the troubles of two key competitors: François Fillon, the candidate of the mainstream right, was caught in a scandal involving paid no-show jobs for his family. He must figure out how to translate the poetry of a campaign built on borrowing the best ideas from either end of the political spectrum into the prose of governing in a way that doesn’t alienate everyone.

Macron has outlined an ambitious agenda that would knit together the countries that use the euro currency, through a common euro-zone budget and finance minister. The incumbent decided not to seek re-election, a first for a sitting president, while former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls suffered humiliating defeats in their parties’ primaries. He said on Friday that he had already chosen his prime minister but would not reveal who it was until after taking office.

Unlike the cliffhanger in France, however, the outcome is set to be a win-win for Macron, as well as for the bloc.

Putin has repeatedly denied interfering in the elections of any foreign countries, and rejected previous allegations about Kremlin-backed hacking operations. Unlike Macron, Le Pen has called for sanctions on Russian Federation to be lifted and coverage of her on Russian Federation sites and media has been positive.

It follows another win for Merkel in the western state of Saarland. France is one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

Macron and Erdoğan also agreed to meet face-to-face at a NATO Summit scheduled for Brussels later this month.

Guterres is planning to write a letter to Macron to propose a meeting “in the very near future”, said Dujarric.