Emmanuel Macron will take office as France's next president on Sunday, President Francois Hollande announced Monday, a day after the independent centrist candidate defeated Marine Le Pen in a battle for the country's leadership.
Macron appeared beside Hollande at a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to observe the 72nd anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
Macron did not make a statement, but his attention will already have turned to the choice of a prime minister and to the legislative elections of June 11 and 18, when all 577 seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, will be up for grabs.
Expectations could hardly be higher. "Beyond the symbols, the new, optimistic president of this country in depression will have to demonstrate by concrete signs, very quickly, that he received the messages from this extraordinary campaign," Jerome Fenoglio, the editorial director of Le Monde, wrote in an editorial on the newspaper's front page.
Macron's year-old political movement plans to field candidates for all the seats. In the meantime, he is expected to name a prime minister and a Cabinet.
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 largely unknown to voters in constituencies they compete for.
If Macron's party does not win enough seats in the legislative elections, the Assembly could force him to choose another prime minister. And 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 electorate.
The two mainstream parties -- the Socialists and the Republicans -- are aiming to reassert themselves in the legislative elections, as is Le Pen's far-right National Front. The movement of the far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon also hopes to do well.
A protest Monday in Paris against Macron's planned reforms drew several thousand people. There were brief clashes with police and several arrests.
"He needs to cool down," said Raphael Garine, a protesting student. "If he wants to continue the reckless policies of the past five years, we will take to the streets to demonstrate."
Overnight Sunday, police arrested 141 people in eastern Paris in clashes with masked protesters.
Sylvie Goulard, a centrist member of the European Parliament who supports Macron, told the CNews channel on Monday that Macron would go to Berlin for his first trip outside France, but she added that he might first visit French troops posted abroad.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany congratulated Macron on his "spectacular" victory Monday.
"He carries the hopes of millions of French people and of many people in Germany and the whole of Europe," Merkel said at a news conference. "He ran a courageous pro-European campaign, stands for openness to the world and is committed decisively to a social market economy."
In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May said Macron's win makes it even more important for British voters to back her Conservatives in the election June 8, to strengthen Britain's hand in its divorce proceedings with the EU.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia joined a chorus of world leaders, including President Donald Trump, who have congratulated Macron.
"The citizens of France have trusted you with leading the country at a difficult time for Europe and the whole world community," Putin said in a statement. "In these conditions it is especially important to overcome mutual mistrust and unite efforts to ensure international stability and security."
Putin made no mention of the widespread reports that agents linked to Russia had tampered with the Macron campaign, just as they hacked the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the United States last year.
Macron's campaign said on Friday evening that his party had been the target of a "massive and coordinated attack," after a trove of stolen campaign documents and emails was published online.
A New York-based cyberintelligence consultancy, Flashpoint, said there were indications that a hacker group with ties to Russian military intelligence had been behind the attack. Putin and his spokesman have repeatedly denied interfering in the elections of foreign countries.
The National Front in France was regrouping after the presidential race. The latest results showed that Le Pen won 33.9 percent of those who voted -- less than expected but by far the party's strongest showing in a presidential election.
Echoing Le Pen's concession speech, Nicolas Bay, the National Front's secretary-general, said that "a new divide is emerging: the patriots face the globalists."
He said it was "obviously necessary for the National Front to transform itself." Asked whether the party's name would change, as Le Pen has hinted, he suggested that such a move was likely.
Macron's movement announced Monday that it was re-branding itself with a new name, "Republic on the Move." Macron also resigned as its president, as he takes on his new role as president of the republic. Announcing the changes, the movement's secretary-general, Richard Ferrand, said the organization will be "a new political force" on the landscape redrawn by Macron's victory. It will release its list of 577 candidates on Thursday.
Information for this article was contributed by Sewell Chan and Aurelien Breeden of The New York Times; and by Sylvie Corbet, John Leicester, Elaine Ganley, Helena Alves, Lori Hinnant, Thomas Adamson, Philippe Sotto, Oleg Cetinic and Carlo Piovano of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/09/2017