Emmanuel Macron has been a skilled student, a champion of France’s tech startup movement, an investment banker and economy minister.
But the man who will become France’s youngest president has never held elected office.
After a campaign based on promises to revive the country through pro-business and pro-European policies, the 39-year-old centrist independent defeated far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and her protectionist, anti-immigration party.
He quit his job as a banker at Rothschild to become Socialist President Francois Hollande’s economic adviser, working for two years by Hollande’s side at the presidential palace.
Then as economy minister in Hollande’s government from 2014 to 2016, he promoted a package of measures, notably allowing more stores to open on Sundays and evenings and opening up regulated sectors of the economy.
In 2016, Macron launched his own political movement, En Marche, or In Motion, and quit the Socialist government.
He promised to shake up the political landscape by appointing a government that includes new figures from business and civil society.
His next challenge will be to get a parliamentary majority in an election next month to make major changes _ with no mainstream party to support him.
The strong advocate of a free market and entrepreneurial spirit has called for France to focus on getting benefits from globalization rather than the protectionist policies advocated by the far right.
In his political rallies, he encouraged supporters to wave both the French tricolour and the European Union flags.
Macron had an unexpected test of his political skills following the first round of the vote during what became known as ``the battle of Whirlpool,'' when Le Pen upstaged him at a Whirlpool factory in Amiens that is threatened with closure.
In a country shaken by recent terror attacks, he pledged to boost the police and military as well as the intelligence services and to put pressure on internet giants to better monitor extremism online.
To improve Europe’s security, he wants the EU to deploy some 5,000 European border guards to the external borders of the bloc’s passport-free travel zone.
Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron resoundingly won France’s landmark presidential election, first estimates showed on Sunday, heading off a fierce challenge from the far-right in a pivotal vote for the future of the divided country and Europe.
The victory caps an extraordinary rise for the 39-year-old former investment banker, who will become the country’s youngest-ever leader.
Initial estimates showed Macron winning between 65.5 per cent and 66.1 per cent of ballots ahead of Le Pen on between 33.9 per cent and 34.5 per cent.
Macron is now poised to become one of Europe’s most powerful leaders, bringing with him a hugely ambitious agenda of political and economic reform for France and the European Union.
The result will resonate worldwide and particularly in Brussels and Berlin where leaders will breathe a sigh of relief that Le Pen’s anti-EU, anti-globalisation programme has been defeated.
After Britain’s vote last year to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S., the French election had been widely watched as a test of how high a tide of right-wing nationalism would rise.
Le Pen, 48, had portrayed the ballot as a contest between Macron and the “globalists” - in favour of open trade, immigration and shared sovereignty - and her “patriotic” vision of strong borders and national identities.
