MARSEILLE, FRANCE // The new French president, François Hollande, is strongly placed to win the parliamentary majority he needs to pursue his socialist vision while heightening the risk of a Franco-German rift in tackling Europe's debt crisis.
First-round voting in legislative elections on Sunday gave the socialists and their allies nearly 47 per cent of the vote but, more importantly, put Mr Hollande on course to govern without relying on far-left acquiescence.
A clear working majority in Sunday's nationwide run-offs would strengthen Mr Hollande's hand, notably against the centre-right German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in a series of crucial meetings on saving the euro.
The weekend package of aid for Spanish banks initially boosted markets yesterday, but any respite for the beleaguered single currency zone could be short-lived.
The Spanish economy remains at breaking point while Greece, the weakest of the euro states, goes to the polls for its own decisive second-round elections on Sunday.
A victory for the left-wing Syriza party, which rejects the harsh budget package on which Greece's international bailout depends, could lead to exclusion from the 17-nation zone.
Mr Hollande is expected in Rome this week for talks with the Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, and will see Mrs Merkel and the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, at a Group of 20 (G20) economic summit in Mexico early next week.
Assuming a winning socialist performance on Sunday, Mr Hollande will be emboldened in his insistence on encouraging growth and resisting sole reliance on austerity measures when European Union leaders meet on June 28. On the other hand, an absolute majority would also enable him to ignore hard-left opposition and sign up to those financial reforms, such as integrated banking, with which he broadly agrees.
Polling in the first round gives the socialists a good chance of taking the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority in parliament.
The Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the centre-right party of the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and allies are unlikely on current projections to have more than 263 members.
The UMP refuses to abandon hope that fear of Mr Hollande's tax-and-spend programme, and a much higher turnout, may yet produce a surprise. Abstention in the first round, at nearly 43 per cent, was a record for the French fifth republic dating from 1958.
France under the left faces what the conservative newspaper Le Figaro called a "disastrous economic programme" characterised by "an explosion of taxes and public spending increases" and rejection by Mr Hollande of the fiscal stability pact agreed by euro zone partners.
Senior UMP figures, including Jean-François Cope, the general secretary of the party, and Alain Juppe, a former prime minister, called for a massive mobilisation to keep alive hopes of second-round results that would force "cohabitation" on the socialists.
But this now seems optimistic. Xavier Bertrand, who was Mr Sarkozy's employment minister, appeared to be clutching at straws when citing the socialists' failure to achieve quite the "pink wave" - or landslide win - for which they hoped. "What I sense is that the French didn't want to give François Hollande a blank cheque," he told France 2 television. "They've been made plenty of promises but the bill is on its way and may arrive from the day after the second round."
The socialists are cautious, but confident. "Change is just beginning," said the prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, who sailed back into parliament in his own constituency with an outright majority. But Mr Hollande needed a "solid, consistent majority" to see his plans through.
One anomaly of the first-round results is that Marine Le Pen's far-right Front National (FN) is unlikely, according to the CSA polling institute's projections, to win more than three seats despite establishing itself as France's third political force. Yet Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Left Front, supported by communists, is on track to take 12 to 17 seats, with only half the FN's share of the total vote.
The definitive results showed the socialist party ahead with 29.4 per cent followed by the UMP on 27, the FN on 13.6, the Left Front on 6.9 and Green candidates, also expected to win seats, on 5.5.
In consolation, Ms Le Pen brushed aside Mr Mélenchon in their personal battle of the extremes, in the northern constituency of Hénin-Beaumont. She topped the poll with 43 per cent, her far-left rival forced into third place by the mainstream socialist candidate, Philippe Kemel.
"The failure of Mr Mélenchon is the icing on the cake," she told Le Monde newspaper. "He came to conquered territory with a bruising campaign, noisy and violent. People do not like it."
Although a second-round victory is not assured, Ms Le Pen is well placed to end her party's 14-year exclusion from parliament. Her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, 22, was the first-round leader in the southern town of Carpentras but faces a tough battle to beat the UMP on Sunday.
