Biden applauded Macron for his election victory in France

US President Joe Biden congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron, who won against his rival, the far-right Marine Le Pen, in the second round of Sunday's presidential elections.

“Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron on his re-election. France is our oldest ally and a key partner in addressing global challenges. I look forward to our continued close cooperation, including in supporting Ukraine, defending democracy and combating climate change,” he said on his official Twitter profile.

For his part, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also conveyed his congratulations to the French candidate. “We look forward to continuing close cooperation with France on global challenges, underpinning our long and lasting Alliance and friendship,” he reiterated on his Twitter profile.

Macron won 58.56 percent of the vote in the second round of the presidential elections, according to the official results of the Ministry of the Interior, with the counting completed by 100 percent.

This count gives Macron 18.7 million votes, compared to 13.2 million won by his direct rival, Marine Le Pen. The leader of Grupación Nacional has achieved about 41.45 per cent of the votes.

The two had already faced each other in the second round of the 2017 elections, when Macron won 66 percent of the votes. In fact, Le Pen has described as “historic” its result this Sunday, unprecedented for the far right in France.

Data from the Ministry of the Interior put the participation rate close to 72 per cent, so abstention would be 28 per cent, the highest since 1969. 4.7 percent of the voters who have participated have voted blank, while 1.6 percent correspond to invalid votes.

After the victory of liberal Emmanuel Macron in the presidential elections, opponents and macronists rushed this Sunday to appeal to the French to mobilize in the legislative elections in June, in which the president would need to have a majority of deputies to implement his program.

“Legislative elections will be important to allow the president to continue acting,” said government spokesman Gabriel Attal, the first to open the battle for the future formation of the National Assembly, in an intervention on the TF1 network.

The far-right Marine Le Pen, who wanted to see in her defeat “a form of hope” and the “aspiration for great change”, warned against “the high risk that Macron will seize all the springs of the executive and legislative power.”

(With information from Europa Press)

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