After The Presidency, Parliament: Macron Faces New Battle

to French president caps a stunning rise for the political newcomer and his fledgling party but he now faces another battle to form a parliamentary majority, with his rivals already plotting revenge in June's general election.

Macron won 66 percent of the vote in Sunday's presidential run-off against the far right's Marine Le Pen, the biggest win by a French president since Jacques Chirac's victory over Le Pen's father Jean-Marie in 2002.

But he faces a tall order to convert his victory into the majority he needs to implement his ambitious agenda of labour, welfare and education reforms.

Le Pen's National Front (FN) and the other elections losers are all hell bent on bouncing back in the parliamentary vote.

Traditionally, French voters have handed a parliamentary majority to the newly elected president in the general election. But for the first time in the country's post-war history, the new president does not have a big party machine behind him, with the two main governingparties, the Republicans and Socialists, crashing out in the first round.