PARIS ��There was no public celebration by President Emmanuel Macron's government on Sunday night as his party claimed a historic majority in the French parliament.
Macron's Republic on the Move movement was on track to win about 350 seats in the 577-strong National Assembly. That would be the biggest majority in 15 years. But the number of voters turned off by the political process highlighted the urgency of the job facing the country's newly elected leader.
Sunday's turnout of about 44 percent was the lowest ever for a French legislative election, and about 10 percentage points below the previous record low, a reminder that almost half of the vote in April's first round of the presidential election went to candidates opposed to the open borders and free markets of the European Union that Macron favors.
"Abstentionism is never good for democracy," Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said in a televised statement. "The government will consider it has an obligation to succeed. Now comes the time for action."
Macron's majority gives him a free hand to push through his program of liberalizing France's labor market and pushing for closer European integration. He has five years to persuade those disenchanted voters that his plans can work for them rather than more radical alternatives. His anti-European Union antagonists Marine Le Pen of the National Front and far-left Jean-Luc Melenchon both claimed parliamentary seats for the first time, giving them a platform to keep pushing their more extreme approaches.
"What's at stake is much more than whether Macron can be re-elected," said Jean Garrigues, a professor of history at the University of Orleans. "The entire political establishment of France will live or die by this. If Macron doesn't succeed, then the next political response to people's anger will come from one of the extremes."
German Chancellor Angel Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saluted Macron's parliamentary win late Sunday.
The new parliament meets for the first time June 27, with labor-market reform at the top of the agenda. That's a task that has eluded French presidents for generations. Philippe has said he'll present his plans to Cabinet ministers June 28 and in July ask parliament for permission to legislate by decree. Macron aims to have the new rules in force by September, when Germany's national election should establish the foundation for broader European reforms.
The government is being watched both domestically and internationally because France's labor code is blamed for discouraging hiring and keeping French growth below the eurozone average. Unemployment in France is roughly double that of Germany and the U.K., helping Le Pen to attract her party's biggest ever vote in May's presidential runoff.
Luckily for Macron, he's inheriting an economy showing signs of a cyclical improvement for the first time in years, with consumer confidence at its highest in 10 years.
"Firming economic growth and rising employment in France and across most of Europe provide a favorable backdrop," Holger Schmieding, an economist at Berenberg bank in London, said in an emailed note. "Making dismissal rules more flexible in times of an economic upswing is less difficult politically than in times of crisis."
Yet the government also has to contend with a budget that risks overshooting its 3 percent target in 2018, according to the national auditor, even before enacting the tax cuts and spending increases that Macron promised during the presidential campaign.
"It won't be easy," Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said after winning re-election in his Normandy constituency Sunday. "The French voters' decision leaves a massive responsibility on our shoulders �� to deliver results."
Melenchon, won 19 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election with the backing of the Communist Party, will have about 26 seats in parliament. He promised "total resistance" to Macron's economic policies and said his majority had no legitimacy because of the low turnout.
The government is also promising other contentious legislation. On Wednesday, the Cabinet will propose making emergency counterterrorism powers permanent, which is opposed by many human-rights groups.
(Geraldine Amiel contributed to this report.)
