Boris Johnson Congratulates Macron On Re-election As France President

Boris Johnson has congratulated Macron on his re-election as France president.

Glamtush reports that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has congratulated Emmanuel Macron on his re-election Sunday, as projections showed the French president won a second term in office.

“France is one of our closest and most important allies,” Johnson posted on Twitter. “I look forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.”

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday defeated his rival Marine Le Pen in presidential elections, projections showed, prompting a wave of relief in Europe that the far-right had been prevented from taking power.

Centrist Macron was set to win 57.0-58.5 percent of the vote compared with Le Pen on 41.5-43.0 percent, according to projections by polling firms for French television channels based on a sample of the vote count.

The result is narrower than the second-round clash in 2017, when the same two candidates met in the run-off and Macron polled over 66 percent of the vote.

The outcome, expected to be confirmed by official results overnight, caused immense relief in Europe after fears a Le Pen presidency would leave the continent rudderless following Brexit and the departure of German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called Macron’s victory “great news for all of Europe.”

“The result represents a brilliant victory,” she said to cheers.

Macron is the first French president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002 after his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande left office after only one term.

The 44-year-old is to make a victory speech on the Champ de Mars in central Paris at the foot of the Eiffel Tower where flag-waving supporters erupted in joy when the projections appeared at 8:00 pm local time (1800 GMT).