Emmanuel Macron takes charge of divided France as youngest President

Emmanuel Macron became the youngest president of France on Sunday, leading a country where economic malaise and security concerns drove extremist parties to their highest-ever scores in this year’s election.
 
Macron is the eighth directly elected president of the Fifth Republic, after assuming the role in a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
 
The new head of state takes charge of continental Europe’s leading military power and second-largest economy as both an outsider and an insider. The 39-year-old benefited from the electorate’s desire for fresh faces and solutions, as the first president in the modern era to be elected without the support of France’s two main traditional parties. But, he was his predecessor Francois Hollande’s economic advisor for more than two years and is deeply familiar with the administration’s inner workings.

 

“Most presidents land in the Elysee Palace with no idea how it functions, and they learn on the job,” said Patrick Weil, a historian and political scientist with the CNRS research center in Paris. “Macron has worked there a couple years, was even the deputy chief of staff. He knows the corridors of the Elysee and how it works. He even knows the drivers.”
 
Macron, who arrived in a Renault armored car just as it stopped raining, walked up a red carpet to the Elysee steps where Hollande waited to welcome him. The two men shook hands and went up to the president’s office where they met for a private talk before the ceremony when, among other things, France’s nuclear codes were passed on. Afterward, the Elysee’s new tenant escorted the outgoing president to his car.

 
About 300 guests attended Macron’s inauguration inside the Elysee’s reception hall in the building’s west wing. The hall overlooks gardens where the ceremony was due to continue with the singing of the national anthem and a traditional 21-gun salute from cannon placed at the nearby Invalides.