ANDREW HAMMOND

It was not just much of the French populace which held its breath on Sunday as the presidential election saw incumbent Emmanuel Macron beat off the right-wing challenge of Marine Le Pen.  

While Macron won comfortably in the end, becoming the first president to be re-elected for some two decades, he now faces his toughest challenge yet amid a record high abstention rate of almost 30 per cent, and lower support than in 2017. At stake is not just the future direction of the eurozone’s second largest economy but also wider governance too in the only EU state with a UN Security Council veto, plus nuclear weapons.